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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
NSA-OH-38-80
with
Prescott H. Currier CAPT, ·usN, Retired
1 4 November 19 8 0
M Conference Room Hq Bldg, NSA
by H. SCHORRECK R. FARLEY
Today is the 14th of November 1980. Our interviewee,
Captain Prescott H. Currier, a pioneer in the COMINT
profession who served as a civilian and later as a
navy officer with OP-20-G and other elements of the
Navy Security Grou~ from 1932-1962. The interview
is taking place in the M Conference Room, Headquarters
Building of NSA at Fort Meade. Interviewers: Mr.
Henry Schorreck and Bob Farley. Classification of the
three tapes TOP SECRET COMINT CHANNELS at the request
of Captain Currier. Captain Currier will discuss his
experiences as an expert cryptanalyst iti the pre-World
War II and World War II days at the Navy Building and
Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C. Some of the more
interesting recollections precede the actual interview
on this tape. Captain Currier started to reminisce
and then we began the interview.
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CURRIER:
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3605
Now this sort of thing, as far as I'm concerned
is really ancient history and there's no reason
in the world why that shouldn't go in the records.
Before I came in
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FARLEY: Capt, shall we get underway here and talk about •.. get
some of this incidental material out and then get
into the meat. Delighted that you are going to give
us all this time and recall how it was way back when.
Can we just get a little bit on your family background,
Captain, and pre-navy days so that we can pick it up.
CURRIER: Well, my father was in school work ••• Dartmouth graduate.
When he graduated he went into public school work; he
was principal of the school in Holbrook, Massachusetts
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where I was born. He moved to New Hampshire shortly
thereafter. I went to New Hampshire public schools.
Sometime about 1923-t.aecided that the state of New
Hampshire wasn't paying him enough and he would go
back to farming,~e was born on a farm, so we went "'""
back to the town in which he was born. I lived on
a farm up until r was ••. roh ..• rwith one interval,
up until I was 1 7 and graduated from high school.
Nothing spectacular or phenomenal about my childhood;
I didn't do anything that was the least bit unusual.
My uncle who was at the time a Captain in the navy
whose other nephew had gone to the Naval Academy via
a Presidential appointment, he persuaded me that I
should do the same. I had had no briefing; I knew
nothing about anything. I was the youngest, most
naive youngster you can imagine.~ £5"idn't really know
what I was getting into. I therefore enlisted in the
!)_avy. When I got to Newport, I didn't know where I ~
was going, nor did I know why I was there, and it
wasn't for three weeks after I arrived that I finally {) IJ
(ma someone who would listen to me and let me tell
them that I came to go to the Naval Academy preparatory
school in Newport, so they took me out of the little
training company that I was in and I went into the
Naval Academy preparatory class which is run at
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Newport for enlisted men who came in for this purpose.
There were some dozen or so. To cut a long story short,
after the completion of this, which is something on the
order of three months, which was simply an academic
review course, didn't amount to very much, we all took
the examinations ••• a physical examination and an
examination to be covered in the review course. It
turned out that I was 15 pounds underweight, so the
medical officer called me in and said, "We just can't,--'2-
~here's no way in world that we can get your weight
up in the next month, so you're not going to be able
to go on to the academy preparatory class in Norfolk,"
which was another four months, I think, or five months,
at the end of which ••• it ended sometime in May, at
that time you go on to Annapolis for the summer with A
the class of plebes that c~me in. In the course of
the interview with this man, whose name I've forgotten,
I simply mentioned that my uncle was at that time
president of the naval examining board. He said,
"God sakes, son, why didn't you tell me that in the
f . 1 ) .. h ·d 1rst p ace, e sa1 , "I would have passed you with
a broken leg!" He would, precisely. however the ~
time was not then until they asked me what I wanted
to do, and I didn't have to fogiest notion of what "
I wanted to do, so I said, in effect, "What have
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you got?" And I went through a list of schools and
I saw something called a radio school, which interested
me, so I ·said, "Oh, I know, I'll serve out my time
11 learning what you've got to teach me about radios.
You never did get to the academy, then?
Never got to the academy.
Ok.
No, I never got to the academy.
That's one of the things we were confused abou~ too.
No, never got to the academy. I'll tell you how it
happened. Ir\\ / _,,klright sir.
v I went to radio school for the required time.-.J.I
don't remember how much it was. I went to sea
on the Whitney. At the end of the following year,
we had a funny little communications officer, whose
name I don't remember, but he was •••• he was not very
smart, not really. And he came up to me one day
and said, "Do y6u know ••• did you ever hear about
ONI?" And I said, "No, I never heard about ONI."
He said, "Well they're looking for people like you.
I said, "Well ••• " He said, "I'm going to send you
to Washington•" ~ ~o off I went and I didn't •• y
I didn't know where I was going or why. He didn't
know either, by the way, because they wouldn't tell
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~ him, but I ended up in the,..Cana intercept operator's
training class up on the roof in the sixth wing at
the navy department. This was really good fun; I
thought this was great. And after the required time,
and I've forgotten what it was ••• three months, I guess,
four maybe, and that would have been, let's see, I guess
the summer of '32, I went out to the Philippines.~nd
there were only ••• {there were just four of us, eventually •••
shortly thereafter, we became six and then we became
eight, but that was the total all the time I was there.
e. But this was really great fun, I thought, and I s~t down
to teaching myself Japanese ~s well as I could, and
saw some of these rather simple systems that were being
used and set about breaking some of them and translating
them and sending in reports.
Were you intercepting them 1 too?
Yeah, intercepting them and breaking the material,
translating them, and writing the reports, and sending
it in.
A triple threat.
Well, I got myself into serious difficulties. A message
came out.-l'we had no ••• we had a chief in charge at the
time ••• but sometime at the end of the following year, we
got an officer in charge, Goodwin ••• E.S.L. Goodwin, who
was ••• you may reme•b~r •••
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Yes, I know the name.
He, one day, called me aside and said, "I have a very
serious message from ONI. They want me to put you -e-n- UMDi-U
Jsurveillance and keep you." He said, "They feel ........
that you've been doing something you shouldn't • .__..9--
~obody, none of our languag~ students •••• no one we've
do th i s 'so r t of thing .~ t ' s ju s t ever heard of could "' ,.
impossible 0 so they did. And the correspondence to ,..
that effect, and some of it is still available over
in Nebraska Avenue, and there's still some downtown • ..._...9--
!hey just weren't about to believe that an individual ----could be an intercept operator, a cryptanalyst, and
a translator and a report writer all in one.~his ... ::>
sort of just doesn't happen according to them, and I
had quite a time getting myself out of it, but I
W"o/'1-eventually pro~ed to them that this.=...Tabsolutely the way
I
it happened. That there was no hanky panky and I didn't
have a pillow mate who spoke Japanese, who was teaching
me back Japanese, which was one of the things that they
were concerned about, and that I wksn't getting any
information from
believed it, and
anyone else, and eventually they
tt l\ everything came out ~ight, so they •••
Were they simple systems1 ...)pretty simple Japanese systems?
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These were1Yche ones that I'm talking about now were
fairly simple.~-2:eries of simple transposition systems
/( of three-,e-ana code, something that I had never seen
befor~ but it looked like fun to me, so I thought I
would just have a go at it. {)
Was this at ,.Klongapo? 0
This is at ~longapo, Station C.
Who was there with you, do you recall?
MacGregor was the chief in charge, '))
Willis Ruk; a man
named Horn, I'd have to go through a list to remember
the others who were there. There was a man named
Ritchie, a red-haired radio man who came later on
toward the end of the
second year. I can't
time, certainly the end of the
remember ••• ! couldn't~f I e
racked my brain, I could think of others, but •••
What were you told, Captain when you went there about
the mission? What were you supposed to do? Did anybody
tell you, or just ••• ?
Now this •••• every •••• no, the only everyone "knew" that
there was one target and that was Japan. ONI had set
up all of their war plans ••• their orange war plans ~-
and there was nothing else. There was no other enemy.
And there was no question in my mind, or in that of any
of the others that I knew about, that there was anything
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else to intercept except Japanese traffic and there
was no question but what this ••• what we were doing was
the one thing that we should be doing, no, there was
no direction. We were all more or less ••• j'we compiled
our own records. We kept our own TA recordst our own
frequency records. We forwarded a technical report
as it were, once a month, which were written theoretically
by the chief in charge, but I wrote them.
Washington?
Yeah, from Station C to Washington and into OP-20-G.
We, as I recall, never got any feedback at all. We
compiled our own records. They accepted what we go~.-.-:9"-
what we gave them, but there was no one here competent ~ o( j VI$ h.n U •
to do any, say, intercept control} We did all our own ' fl
right, it was all
to break~llsign /'
local, and we kept track ••• I used
systems. The ••• was, in fact, there
was Ke.ft
nothing that I did not do, and~ the TA records, wrot<..
and -go tin o tt g h the report s and one thing or another •
Was there anybody locally who was interested in what
you had obtained?
No, no, no ••••
No even the intelligence officer from the Asiatic Fleet?
Well, that was Wenger.--.YI'll come to that later.
Ok.
Yeah, the Asiatic Fleet was, as ~ recipient, interested,
but none of the material went direct from us to the
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Asiatic Fleet. It all came back to Washington. Any-
thing that they got came back to them from ONI___rin
intelligence channels. There was no SIGINT ••• COMINT
was not identified as such to the recipients in the
fleet. It all came back to Washington and was
regurgitated through ONI and back out into the fleet
as intelligence without i~ source actually being
delineated.
What did you think of that system?
I didn't have any thoughts about •••• do you mean what
did I think about it now, or what did I think about
it then? I didn't know about it then •••• I didn't
know about it.
Security-wise.
Ok.-.J-yhat do you think about it -:;:..
? now.
Well, it was probably less than good and it's a
situation that was, in the course of being changed,
this was early on, you have to remember.~
Yeah.~-
And you get both the ~rmy and the ~avy, but particularly
the ~avy who at that time had begun to realize the ~
value of COMINT, and the people who really knew in ONI,
and various of the other; ........... Jvery few of the other high
commands were aware of the fact that this source was
one of our best sources, particularly as far as the
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~avy in the Pacific was concerned. ~
A system is
something, as I say, at that time, there was no other
system. People who produced COMINT did not talk directly
with the recipients of the information. It all went to
ONI and out, and this, I don't think that anyone thought
that this was particularly bad. It was an inefficient
system. Given ari average circumstance, and most
intercept stations had no ability to do anything other
1J than copy traffic, keep track of what they copied,
/\
send the material back to Washington, write a weekly
technical report on the condition of the receivers and
the condit~on of the roof of the building in which they
were, and that was about it. That's all that actually
happened in most stations. It happened at Station C
that there just happened to be someone there;_J..fuer--.:tho
was interested in doing something else and for whom it
was. great fun~ ~nd I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't
do it, so that during that period, things at Station C
were, in fact, a bit different, but I didn't;..__){ honestly
d i d n ' t , a s I c an • • • h o o kin g b a ck on i t , .f had 11.0 • J. I ha d
no doubts about whether or not it was a good idea or a
bad idea; it was just something that seemed to be fun
~
for me and I looked forward to spending,~I used to sit
up all night many nights and when I came off watch, I
would simply stay there, and I couldn't leave it alone.
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Were you aware that this kind of thing had been going
on through the '20s?
Oh, yes, yes, yeah.
Did you see any evidences of that? Any old records?
Oh, yes, yes, yeah, there was in OP-20-G, there were
old intercept records, old traffic, yes• for instance, ::::::
there were, I don't know whether you know or not, you
bl.A-t probably do, ~ili:i"r the navy for awhile had ~ne, or
two, I've forgotten which, two operators on the
President Lines going back and forth across the Pacific.
I've heard that.
Yeah, and they all had,.J::hey had a receiveq in the
State Room and a voucher for meals, and that's about
it I guess~ ~nd they produced a certain amount of ~
traffic, copied at random as they saw fit, young •••
J . e~ h 1mmy PJ...e-t'son was one of t ose operators. Yeah, that
we knew, and we knew t-ft..a..t-~from talking to some of
the older people that they had been doing,that since
the mid-20s. Yeah, it was well known.
They collect anything worthwhile? Those people who
were making the South Pacific run?
Not as far as I know/~not a great deal. It was the
same kind of traffic that was being copied in Guam
and the Philippines.
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Do you remember what kind of receivers they had?
They had an RA and ••• let's se~that was the low
w frequency.~.RT was the high frequency receiver,
and the RA was.~RB was the low £-requenc •. ~~ I
frequency receiver and it took up a space about half
the length of this table. the size ••• about 00J11tt,~.
SCHORRECK: (Yl-11 Was it any good? /1
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Well, for those days, yeah, for vacYm;:-tube /'
receivers,
yes, they were good, rugged, standard navy receivers.
How about DF?
DF was effective. We had no DF. We never used any
DF on any intercept targets. You're talking about the
service DF in the navy?
Yeah.--.Twell, the ones we used in the COMINT business. ::--
There were none1 J:"no DF used in the COMINT business.
Not that we can •••
Early in the game, huh?
Not then, no.
Not then, no, ok.
o.J. If there were any Japanese signals that were DF, it was
A
done from somewhere other than the Philippines and Guam.
I did not have anything to do with it and I didn't know
that there was ••• I knew about DF, of course, and I knew
that the navy used it and I had operated DF, but, no
there was no DF.
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Was there an abundance of traffic? Was there lots of
Japanese?
There were buckets full of traffic. They operated
24 hours a day. There were four or five different kinds .....,/
of traffic--e-f) point-to-point traffic which was sent ,.;;:
on schedule could all be copied very easily, and as
I remember, let's see, AT was Tokyo; AK was Korea; /hkf~t1 c?)
AO was Monoyoto; AG was Taiwan; and so on, and the A
point-to-point traffic was handled mostly on schedule
between about a dozen Japanese land stations. Now
in addition, they were broadcast to the fleet, and
then there was an enormous amount of fleet traf fic/--9-
regu·lar service traffic which was -seat •• h11 sent
in plaintext. Exercise traffic, which during an
exercise period, and particularly during the 1933
maneuvers, it was possible to copy Japanese traffic
on almost any frequency on the spectrum as much as
you wanted to, 24 hours a day. I've never seen so
much traffic at one time. It was just;~t was just 1__.J-
the airways were swamped with Japanese naval traffic,
and ..the -.Xhere was no problem in getting traffic.
The only problem was, which was a problem orginally,
was to identify the circuits which were being copied
and to determine which ones were of importance and
which ones were not and in an exercise period, it . -... EFOP SECRET/./81)
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was not always possible to do this. In the first
place, the calls were all J,-rr:'etipher~efuring an /I ,A
exercise period, ~but the operators were
sufficiently ill-trained to make enough slips so
that you could identify......-.yoo could idea~calls without a number, but it was almost impossible for
an intercept operator to identify traffic by type
or by addressee and originator while it was being
copied, so that ~verything was copied. Some of
it, and it was easy to identify--+-n---t7ti:i"TT"'r-i-~~
exercise tr af f ic;__r;;;:a neuve r traffic by i~ heading
and so on, so this is no real problem. And it was
all enciphered in special ciphers which were
used only during the exercise period, but there
was no lack of traffic.
It was all manual morse, then?
~very bit of it was manual morse. -:;;
No plain •••
No.
. • • language at all. I guess they did •••
Well, it was all. plain language ••• most of it was plain
language. It was unenciphered Japanese, but sent
manual morse.
Manual morse.
Oh yeah, it was all manual morse.
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No machines, then?
None.
Could I ask you a little bit about the '33 maneuvers?
Were you there when they tried~hen they had the
Gold Star? cJ I was there when the •• ~h, I ,,.,k-R-ew-.o,._.!E-7@~-·t._J.I
was never on the Gold Star, but I knew the Gold Star
ran out of Guam and a rest and rehabilitation trip for
/ the people on Guam/ahat was their principles, and
as a supply ship for Guam) yeo...h.
~~id you know that they had the intercept on
board for the '33 maneuvers?
Yeah, I knew that th.ea a ayeafia •al kfteW -t:fl.a_jthere was
lvt-lh<-an intercept team on the Gold Star, and of course o ~ -th c:_ rr.a.nci..ufer.; / ~k-n-ew thae--;- that's right, yeah. But those '33
maneuvers ••• we had, I'guess it was about one of the
first times that we put two men on watch at one time,
but I never saw any of the traffic that the ~
~L intercepted, but I knew that there was a group
on there who were doing this.
You all were alerted also for those '33 maneuvers.
No ••• depends on who alerted whom.
Ok.~ou alerted Washington ••••
There was no doubt when ~he maneuvers started •••
let me go back just a bit.
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EFOP SECRET//81) SCHORRECK: Ok.
CURRIER: It was known through regular naval intellig~nce
channels that that was to be a grand maneuver year.
As a matter of fact I suspect this probably may have
even been published in Japanese newspapers; I'm not
sure whether they were, I'm only guessing at this,
but I do know that "everybody knew that it was the
year for grand ~aneuvers." As to when it was actually
supposed to start, I expect this was governed pretty
much by the weather, and when this actually started,
it was obvious to any intercept operator that something
v e r y d i f f·e r en t w a s g o in g on • There was no doubt about
it. There was, for instance, a hundred times as much
traffic as there had been. The addresses of all of
the messages concerned with the maneuvers was readily
identified, so that the situation was so obviously
different that nobody had to tell anybody anything;
it was just there. As far as having gotten a word
from Washington that something was about to take
place1..J'no. If it happened, I didn't know about
it, but I'm quite certain not.
SCHORRECK: Would you like to go back and tell us a little bit
about Wenger's rol~ in what was going on?
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By the way, I've been visited by Jeffrey, by his
son, a couple of times. As you know, he's trying to
write a biography of his father. -b .. nywey • .--.5;.nd I:ie ;;:=.
has asked me about various things. He says that I'm
one of the few people who knew his father in the 30\
who had any personal contact with him. I didn't have
all that much, but we did know one another. He was---~
be w a r ·t he As s i s t an t c 0 mm u n i c at i 0 n s 0 f f i c e r f 0 r -fJ..A.- A VI 7 t?)
navy attache~ and he came out ••• I think he was
assigned sometime late '32 or early '33; I've
forgotten the exact dates, but on one of his trips
to f1ongapo ••• rI don't know whether anyone had
mentioned my name to him before or not._rI really
don't know, but I do know I remember the visit, and
he said, "Come on over here and sit down;
to talk to you about one thing orYather," ~
I'd like
so we
just chatted about the way things were going; how
much traffic there was and what the situation was,
and I told him what I was doing,,..,- trttt ... ~.§O he said, -"Tommorow, we're going out for some short-range
battle practice, you come along with me on the August_g."
So I went out and spent the day doing short-range
battle practice on the Augusta, sitting in Joe
Wenger's state room. He had his bunk and his desk
covered with papers of all sorts. We jttst •• he wanted.5>
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~to just wanted to show me everything, so
it was difficult because about every 20 minutes or so
we'd make a dip over 180 and everything would come
sliding off the desk and table onto the floor, and we'd
have to pick it all up and put it back and start over again.
I never honestly knew why he felt he wanted to talk to
me so much about things. ~e spent, as I say, two or three
0 hours in our little shack in ,ft1.ongapo and then the next
day asked me out to spend the day with him in his cabin
going over all the material. I think he felt a bit
frustrated at that point. I think that he was having
some difficulty getting across to his admiral, I think,
how important he thought the material that we were
producing would be to the admiral. And I think he just
wanted someone,./'Jsome understanding ear who would sit
and listen to him. This, in retrospect.~! had no thoughts
like that as a nineteen year old, or however old I was/-l2--
20 years.~~hese things did not go through my mind. I ~
did't know why he was doing it. I enjoyed it. It was
great fun. I loved to talk to him, and I thought it
was a great experience, but I had no deep analytical
thoughts about why Joe Wenger wanted to talk to me
or why he wanted me to come out on the Augus_~ I saw
him once or twice after that in the following year,
beginning, let's see ••• Yno, it must have been toward
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EFOP SECRET/.i'SI) 0
the end of 1934, we moved from Alongapo up to the house
c:t on the top of the hill in Ma~veles, which is just across
from Corregidor. After we moved up there, I didn't •••
I don't think I still .••• he ••• I know1 -..-9.-be went to the
ho s p i t a 1 a t KornvA . fbli'ti= •his tummy was acting up; he had
ulcers and one thing or another and he was, in fact, he
spent quite a bit of his time in the hospital. In fact,
he came back; he was shipped back and went to the
hospital in San Diego~ anyway, I did not see him again .::
out there. In fact, I didn't hear from him again until
I got home in '35 and I had registered at Dartmouth and
I was about to go and I got a letter from him in sometime
about mid-August 1935, asking me whether I would come
to OP-20-G and work as a civilian. I was torn, but
I still had memories of what great fun it was,' so I
at the moment, forewent Dartmouth and decided I ~ould
come to Washington, which I did.
Did you talk to R'imH!"e'"i?
Yeah.
Whe~ you got here?
Oh yeah.
While he was doing this?
H-e-f--ed+-.-~~ hi ng s have ::::
come
I'm glad I did.
out since that time•
I mean1I've known him for a good many years now, and
in the course of talking to him in subsequent years,
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B'"or SECRET.I/SI) I've learned a great deal more about him than I knew
at the time. So, anything that I would say about the
way I felt about why he was doing what he was doing then
is different than I feel abo~t it now.
Sure.
I knew that he was very much concerned about the
organization and operation of the "naval intercept
service. He was convinced, and he had succeeded in
convincing a good many fairly senior people that -this was t!'tre-prime source of very vital information.
That there was no doubt in anyone's mind that some-
time within the next "x" years, five or six, the
U.S. Navy was going to tangle with the Japanese navy.
There was no doubt in anyone's mind at all, and all
the war plans were written toward that end. His
prime purpose in doing what he did was . f\
to conv1ce
" those who received the information that they should
support the development of a viable, active OP-20-G.
Th e p r o b 1 ems i n t ho s e d a y s and c on t i nu e~ t o b e ,
subsequent to that, the fact that OP-20-G was under
the Director of Naval Communications, and th~ Director
of Communications and the Director of Naval Intelligence
did not always see eye to eye, as evidenced by the
fact, for instance, that all of the language assistants,
students and so on, were always ONI people, loaned to
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WOP SE:GRE:T.//61) OP-20-G. They were never part of OP-20-G. It
was never a COMINT operation, including translation.
It was always ONI. All of the material went
directly to ONI from OP-20-G and he, in the early
days, late 20s, early 30~ and the mid-30s, wherever
he happened to be, he was trying to press this
thought home to anyone who would listen. And there
was no doubt in my mind that he was instrumental in
producing all sorts of improvements. The actual
degree of acceptance on the part of various of the
some of them
continued not to have much faith and didn't want
to spend any money to produce what was needed, but
he felt very strongly about it and it was something
that he felt all of his life. and he was one of the ::;
few men who became senior officers who had a complete
grasp of all of the technical intricacies of intercepS
traffic analysis, preparation, forwarding, the lot,
in great detail.
The entire COMINT business?
Yeah, the entire COMINT business, and he knew it from
the receiver to the recipient.
Do you think his grasp was greater than Safford's?
~Oh ye~ Safford was a funny character. "Nervous
Nelly" was the way he has been described by some and
he was. By the way, John Toland, who ~wrote Rising
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WOP SECRET/ISi) Sun and is now doing another book, which he told me
be, or whether or not he's •••• what the situation is
right now.
I think he's still working on it.
But he came to talk with me at some length, and all
he wanted from me was personal characterizations of
people who were around in the 30s. He ·said, "I can't
find anybody who knows anybody." He didn't want to
know any technical details. He wouldn't have been
interested if I had told him precisely how everything
worked. This isn't what he cared about. He wanted
to know what kind of a man Friedman and his cohorts
were ••• jwhat kind of a man Safford was. He made me
,...... immitate him. He said, "What did he talk like?
What was his wife like?" Well, she was a character
too. She almost pushed me over one day. She did,
seriously. We went to a gathering where she was showing
some of her paintings and Saffo~was standing out in
the entry way and I went out to chat with him and I
was there talking to him just as a friend, and she came
dashing across the hall, put both hands on my chest,
and pushed me away and said, "You can't monopolize his
time like that! He has other better things to do."
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She refused to let him to talk to us. We had to
meet him in Washington in different places, without
her knowing about it. She didn't like it. Oh, she
didn't like it at all.
t Well she didn't want ••• ~ot only1 Lwasn't only talking
to him later on, but she didn't want anyone interfering
with his duties toward her. And he had rather a hard
time.
A very possessive woman.
Well, it's been said that Safford's contribution was
more in terms of the COMSEC side of things rather than ••••
Oh, almost completely. Oh yes, it was, this is very
true.
Was it a blessing to have the reorganization in February
of '42? From an administrative point of view for the
sake of the business?
I would have to say yes, but you must remember also
even then I was very much immersed in what I was
doing and I honestly was not ever really aware of any
serious administrative difficulties. If anyone was
having any_ trouble, leave me alone. I have a job to
do, and that's about it, so ~hat's a difficult
question for me to answer.
Yeah.
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27 • EFOP SECRET.I/SI)
CURRIER: I do know that when we moved from the ~avy <!_epartment ==-- ::.
out to Nebraska Avenue, and we did get reorganized,
we had really some very good people at the heads of
these various divisions and sections, and it did, in
fact, work, of course, much better than it had
previously, but the problems were compounded a million
times. I've gone over this in my mind several times,
for instance, just the matter of getting all of the
intercepted material from the Pacific to FRUMEL, FRUPAC
and NEGAT, enciphered, by hand, on ECMs is staggering.
No one who hadn't been around at that time who doesn't
know what a communications center looks like or what's
involved in getting hundreds of millions of groups of
text continually from one place to another with an
enormous amount in every case of hand encryption involved,
is just ••• just doesn't know what things are like.
Anyone who goes into a nice cool air conditioned comm
center nowadays and sees a few people fiddling around
on computer terminals and that sort of thing, doesn't
know what it's like. As an aside, by the way, on this
same subject, when we went over to England in •••
FARLEY: Let me switch tapes, will you?
CURRIER: •••• January '41
FARLEY: Excuse me •••••
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4256081) B°"OP SECRET.I/SI)
28
BEGIN TAPE 1, Side 2
We have transcribed your earlier one and it's great.
70 pages ••• ...}-75 pages.~
Ye ah ••••
Yeah, it's great.
This business of a comm center. The U.S. Navy, of <:,)
course, didn't ••• iI did not know very much about how I
the comm centers were working at that time, but when
we went to England one of the things we had to do
was to go down to the Admiralty, andJ"of course, we
talked with Joe Loomis, by the way, was our guide.
I don't want to digress too much from what I was
talking about before, but this bears on the comm
centers. We went to the Admiralty, down into their
comm center, ~lJ of the top level admiralty traffic - '
was in four-figure code with a one-time pad, except
lypex_ ./ for certain material that was sent in type X, which --was the machine that they had gotten about two years
before, which we saw a lot of. But what staggered me
was in their.f"'so called comm center, there were
probably five ·or six rows of tables, 25 to 30 long,
little sets of tables on each side of which sat a ••.
what do they call themJ--fcryptographers, I guess,
one of them, .and there were probably, what, 75 or
maybe more on watch at a time • .:.Jthis was in the so,
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WOP SECRET.I/SI)
Admiralty comm center. The incoming traffic came in,
was~n pencil, was distributed to the decoders,
decipherers, on the table. One man sat on one side of
the table, wrote down the additive underneath the figure
cipher, subtracted it in his mind, read the code groups
to the man across the table, who~having worked on this
for a considerable period of time, would have probably
memorized at least half of the code values, so as this
man read out a code group, he would write the code
group down, so that he wouldn't forget it, then he
would write it~ value down, without having to look it _,,/
up in the codebook. About half of them he did, in
fact, have to look up. It took him ••• he then produced
a fair copy, in pencil, for distribution to the
distributors, who saw to it that it went to i~
proper place in the Admiralty. Now at some point along
the line, it must have changed format; I don't know
what ••• it wasn't in the comm center .•• somewhere outside,
they may have taken it, and I don't know whether they
were actually typing up some of this material for the
Lords of the Admiralty or for the High Command or not.
I suspect they probably were, so, I don't think these
pencil copies made their way to Winston Churchill, although
they may have. He actually came down and would come down
into the comm center himself and would look over the
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e-or SECRET//51)
shoulders of some of these people. anyway, this was the ~
first time that I had ever seen that kind of a comm
center Joperation. The clutter and the numbers of
people in Navy World War II Comm Centers were almost as
great, except that we had a lot of ECMs and we didn't
have pencils and pads and one-time pads enciphered.
All of the traffic, as I say, all had to be enciphered .J
by hand, deciphered by hand, and produced ••• Jwell, they
did have electromatic typewriters, I guess, but in any
event it was essentially a hand operation. How in
heavens name we produced what we did, I will never
know. It was absolutely unbelieveable. The amount
of traffic that was intercepted went to all three
centers equally, at -4:-he seffle ~oughly the same time./
so that in some cases, 30 or 40 copies of intercepted
messages would all come in to one center, each of the
three centers, all of which had to be sorted out,
identified, classified as to system, then sent on to
the people who were recovering the additives. They
had to put them all together. This was, again, all a
hand operation. There were wave~ all over the place
up there who were keeping the records, and being sure
that everything that came in was entered on the right v
sheetl...Jall hand operation. I don't know how many :J
people there were in our communications center there,
but there must have been three or four hundred.
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ft"OP SECRET//81)
The thing got bigger~~=as the war went on~
And it got bigger.
And they started using the teletypes to bring traffic
back from the west coast.
That's right.
This was all a courier operation in the '30s, wasn't
it?
In the '30s, it was all courier1~ail.~ That's what I mean.
registered mail.
And they put it on the clipper ships coming back from
the Philippines.
Yeah, that's right, yeah. That was all mail, that's
right. There was no hurry then; I mean, a week or
ten days, or two weeks. Didn't make all that difference.
Right.
And the reports came back the same way.
Capt, can we go back to your civilian days?
Sure.
I'd like to pick up the thread again.
Yeah, I know I keep lo;:ing it. I'm sorry.
No, I keep asking questions.
No, they're all interesting.
Yeah, but I don't want to miss part of this. When
you went to work for Wenger as a civilian •••
EfOP SECRET.I.ISi)
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WOP SECRET.I/SI)
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(?"B=- S!2J../ 3 s-s- :z; I· z Z-S°) l,l'f'1j 1$ /P.-11::-s~r:-/.?t-'n.S~lt/
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0COP ~EGRET.I/SI) Yes.
~ould you pi ck it up there? aQd ••. ~ . We 11, wfie 11 ""'I • ~he .J.I don't think I was given any amount
of money that I would be paid, but when I arrived, I think
yeah/ Ythe grade was SP-5, as I remember 1> I'm trying to
think now)._J{P-5, that's Sub Professional, Grade 5.
The pay was $135.00 a month, which was a lot, because
I not only lived on it, but I went to school at night
on it, bought a car, and saved money.~n $135.00 ~
a month. In any event, when I arrived, there were,
let's see, Mrs. Driscoll and her cohorts, Mrs. Talley
and Mrs. Clark¢; that was the trio that worked on most -of the "high-level" ciphers. In that particular time,
it was the Red machine. Holtwick and Wright and a
couple of chiefs ••• rI'm trying to remember who else
was there ••• rnot very many, worked on the Fleet Operational
~ Ciphers, .. ivvfi i eh we i=e • .J:-wh i ch we re four-,tana code, tr ans posed
in a form varying from system to system. Then, in the
back room where the diplomatic and counsular ciphers
were worked, was Doctor ••.•
Wray?
Oh, no, no he didn't come 'til later. He was a Seventh
Day Adventi·st ••• rold man ••.• .a.a~is name's aro~nd .•. rI've \.--O"'.).fi... C
forgotten it offhand .. Fred woodruff, Philip Gate, and
I used to spend my time in all three places• and I don't
remember, honestly, I can't tell you what my job was
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4256089 33
[OP SECRET.I/SI)
supposed to have been. This, I guess I always end up
doing this sort of thing. I spent a lot of time working
on the Red machine. I spentf'probably r most of my time
doing that for the first eighteen months anyway, maybe a
little bit more, and there's some very interesting
stuff that came out of that; I'll tell you about that
it later, I guess it's all right. Then somebody had to
take over the Naval Inspecto~ Ciphers and so on, so
I said I would do that. I also went back and worked oc.c.1-h.. C
with Fred Woodru-f-f" and Philip fiate on the Counsulate
material, just to keep my hand in1 ~and also spent
some time working on the Fleet Ciphers, so I was in
all of them. I was in all four sections in the course
of two or three years. I expect the only thing that I had
actual "responsibility" for were the so-called Naval
Inspector~ Cipher, plus work on the Red Machine, which
I did quite a bit of. The Fleet Ciphers ••. ~herE we~e •• j>we had four or five people at various times working
the recovery. The~transposition grilles, recovering
the code groups, and at that point I didn't do any work on
any of the .•. book breaking work)_jon any of that. As a
matter of fact, I don't know who did. I think ••• wait a
minute, I do, I think that was, most of that work was
being done by the lang~~the ONI people in the front
room. They were the translators, Al framer, Berk{ley,
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various others of that ilk. They were the ones who
were doing most of that and they were theoretically doing
all of the translating of them.
Were you cooperating with Frank Rowlett and his group
on the Red Machine? \Jo/(\ 1lt.I .
Nope, nobody cooperated with the army~pa1n of death. I'
Actually, the army wasn't working with the Red machine
at that point; they had the Purple. The Red machine
was Naval Attache only, nothing else •. The army did
not work on that. At least, if they they did, they
did it surreptitiously. They may have gotten it later
on, but thsy,., in tlu1t ,Jfrom '36, '37, as far as I
know, they had no Red machine traffic at all and didn't
work on it. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
You were saying that the Japanese Red machine was used
for Japanese Naval Attache.
Yes, as far as I know, that's all it was used for.
I don't think it was used for anything else.
They claim that it was used for Japanese Diplomatic
and that it was succeeded by Kryha.
Not as far as I know. I can be wrong, but I never
saw any Red machine traffic,-.and I'm pretty certain ,,,.,~,,.
we got it all-:"~ ~t'" wasn't Naval Attache traffic.
This was diplomatic traffic, by the way. Naval
Attache traffic is diplomatic traffic. I don't think
that the diplomats used the Red machine for "overall"
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diplomatic traffic. I can be wrong, but I certainly
never saw any and as far as I know, the army never did
any significant work on the Red machine. It's successor,
which we never got anywhere with, at the time we were
working on it, I've forgotten what we called it •••
NAT-something, maybe it was just NAT, I guess that's
1.t what it was.~was used at the same time as the Purple
machine, but we never did any work on the Purple
machine and we didn't know anything about, I, personally
and Mrs. Driscoll nor anyone else, as far as I know
-1~·~~1-e.th~e--j~in OP-20-G, knew anything about the Purple
machine. I do remember, sometime, must have been
'38 1~Friedman came over with-3'r guess maybe Rowlett
came too...J~'m not sure ••• with a machine ••.. god, how
much was it • .--a.i:id I ... he • ..:)I remember him coming in
and he set it up on Mrs. Driscoll's desk. She would
hardly stay in the same room with it.
Tell us about Mrs. Driscoll. Was she a talented
individual? o/
You know, I used to think so. When I fir ••• jshe was
e..o ,,,/' a yoemanette in World War I and she worked ••• did she work
with Hebern? I can't remember • ..:Jr think she did.-Y;hen
the ••• tHCM ••• '
That would have been 1920?
~later than that ••• '22 •••• ~
Maybe '22, '23.
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'22, something like that.
She worked as a cryptologist in world War I ••• did she
or not?
As far as I know, she did not, but, as far as I know,
she did not. e,Q
She was a yoemanette; she worked in an
off ice.
Ok.
I~&~~ be wrong about that, because that really was before
my time; I don't think she did. I don't think she got
involved in cryptanalysis until she came with the navy
sometime about '23, maybe '24.
I have a letter that says that they were going to send
Aggie Driscoll to Riverbank to be trained ••. ~
Right, right •• _ •. 9-
••• but this was 1918 or '19, but the war ended and
they said •.. and two other fellows, Chief Petty Officers,
because . of the fact that the war had ended, they never
sent her, but she was supposed to go to Riverbank, but
she ne ve r d id .
Yeah, yeah, well •••.
Which led me to wonder whether she actually did get
involved in crypta~alysis in World War I.
As far as I know, she didn't,
She may not have.
But again, as I say, this is something that you could
find out better than I. I would just be guessing. I
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Q"op SECRET.I/SI) don't think she did, but she did •... I don't know where
she got any formal training. I never knew, but sometime
beginning about '22 or '23, or thereabouts, she did
start working for the navy, and in the course of the
next year or two or three, she acquired a certain amount
of knowledge on the subject and set to work. I don't
know whether she ever had any training~ I think she
probably didn't. She just picked it up. When I first
knew her, which was in '35, she was spending full time
on the Red machine, and she said that she was the one
who first broke the Red machine traffic a. !low/ the Red -::;.
machine was an extremely simple device. You know
what it was?
The six wheel and 20 •.••
It's a Kryha, it was an old commercial Kryha, K-r-y-h-a,
which was adapted by the Japanese for use in their
diplomatic or naval attache communications. It was
devised by Kryha with a 30 wheel and a 6 wheel in order
that in enciphering a five-letter code of which two
letters were vowels, it could be, not only
pronounceable; but the commercial cost was one third
less. Plain text was then defined as;' any five-letter
group that had at least two vowels in it, so the machine
was devised to encipher a five-letter code of which
two of the letters were vowels~ so that the vowels
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would always come out vowels and the consonants,
consonants. That was the reason for the machine
in the first place.
Did he •.•. did Kryha devise that for the Japanese?
No, no, no.
He just built it.
He just built it for commercial use and the reason
I've just given you is why it was built that way.
Ok, and the Japanese ..•
The Japanese bought a copy, modified it and used
the 20 and 6 feature, improperly. If they had used
it properly, it would have ~taken a little bit
longer to break it, but as they used it, they paid
no attention to the letters that were put on the
6t.ir'wheel and those that were put on the 20~ And they
not infrequently would put-say, )!}n1 high-frequency letters
on the 6~wheel or all low-frequency letters/' and the
frequency of the plain text would give it away
immediately, and you could identify without any trouble
to all of the letters on the 6~wheel~ Once you've
done that and you knew what the type of machine was,
and we did know in advance, by the way. We knew it
was the Kryha ~ I'm sure Mrs~ Driscoll knew~ I mean,
if she didn't she was.~~~she should have. She must
have known~ She knew the step. She knew it was step
once, twice, or three times~ She knew there was a
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6~heel and a 20~heel. She knew that the keys must
simply govern the stepping and that the sequences were
varied from day to day. Given all this information, it's
not an astounding feat for a cryptanalyst with the traffic
that was available to break a system like this. It was
not a difficult system. As I say, it was one of the
first ones I ever worked on and it never occurred to
me that it was the least bit difficult. And, of course,
by today's standards, it was less than easy. ~
5-effiC 0 f .J t were talking about Mrs. Driscoll's
ability; she had a certain amount of inate cryptanalytic
sense, there's no doubt about that, but I can remember
when I came back from England in '48, my job was called
IJ "The Director of Research, Naval Security Group, OP-20-G.
I was "N." Mrs. Driscoll •.. let's see, Raven was N-1
Mrs. Driscoll was N-2, Howie Campaign was N-3, and I was
supposed to be responsible for the th1_ee of them
that time on, from 1948, that was the_
Ernrn r by the way, as you may remember. Raven's section was
C och·n" fool,fecH) doing the ~on°za r'a i ng • Mrs. Driscoll continued to
-k-e11..(:~e, work on dipl.omatic -clressin-<1' and on anything else nobody could
identify. Ninety-nine percent of the material that she
had was 5-digit one-time pad traffic. She spent two
solid years taking hand frequency counts of what was
obviously one-time pad traffic. Now, I never felt that
I should go tell her that the world had fallen, times
B°"OP SECRET.I/SI)
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425608f) 40
B'"OP SECRET//SI)
had changed, so •.•• ~nd I thought, well ••. I talked,
with •.. it was Harper, I guess. I remember talking with
him about it too, and, but she and Mrs. Talley just
went on in their own little way with 90 million groups
of one-time pads, figure traffic, sitting down, day
after day, eight hours a day taking hand frequencies.
So, given this and a few other things that happened,
I don't think she was any mental giant or genius.
She did come along at a time when there was no one (\11,M.. \i..«
else there. Friedman was her opposite ...member who
got, of course, all of the publicity, which he saw
to and she was little noted by anybody except the
navy. They did appreciate what she did. She did a
good job for them, when she did it, but ••• yshe was not
in the big leaguesJ._.;rnot according to my opinion.
I never felt ••. jat that time, I had no reason for feeling
that, but as time went on, and I really found out what
things were and how things went, the sort of knowledge
that was required to do what needed doing, I was pretty
certain that she couldn't survive in this world~ ~nd as .. you know, what happened to her when eventually
What sort of a spell did she have over the senior
navy people at OP-20-G?
B'"OP SECRET.I/SI)
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4256088 41
0COP SECRET//31)
I don't know that she had any, except that she was
an odd looking woman anyway. Whether that had anything
to do with it, I don't know. I don't feel that .•. ~maybe
some of them felt that she was a real genius and if she
left, the OP-20-G would collapse. After I had been there
awhile I did not feel that way and I don't at any point
remember feeling overawed. It may be that some of those
who were not cryptanalysts and didn't understand the
business might have felt that she was God's gift
to ONI and that they couldn't possibly do without her.
I don't know that this feeling existed; it may have.
The .•. I don't know ... I think that Joe Wenger felt,
and Harper too, I think, probably, at that point •.• he
was there early on in '36 or 7; I've forgotten now;
I can't remember dates real well. He was there then .
...flaffoi;.d. .~Safford was the one, I think, who really
felt that she was someone that the navy simply
couldn't do without. I'm pretty certain of this.
Was she difficult to work for?
Good Lord, not with me.
No, I was thinking of her ~inions, the people in
her section.
Well, there were only .•. there were never more than CutlZJC.
two, Mrs. Talley and Mrs.~' that was it. She
wouldn't have anyone else. They were both mediocre
0COP SECRET.I/SI)
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CURRIER:
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4256088 42
B'"OP SECRET//51) office type clerks who would do more or less what
they were told and this not very well. And~ •• ~
~I never could understand why she insisted
on having them with her. She would never do anything
or undertake a job without the two of them. They were
nice enough non~entities, but they had no talent.
Did you ever hear of any confrontation between
Mrs. Driscoll and Frank Raven?
Yeah, but I don't ... I can't remember any details.
It was over the Enigma.
Yeah, well Frank probably told you about it. I had very
little to do with the Enigma and when I came back
in April of '41, I brought a lot of material and
we had •••• I remember we had submarine traffic and
Frank was working on it. I do remember ••• ! do remember
just a bit of a spat or a confrontation or argument
about Enigma traffic, but I couldn't tell you what
it was about. I don't remember.
Ok.
You see, <'/ e111
Raven •.. ,let's see Bob~and Frank Raven and
Lynn and Brotherhood all came at the same time and it
took me about six months before I could tell Lynn and
Raven apart. They were both big. They looked to me
exactly alike. They were about 8 11 taller than I, both
of them, and they both came from somewhere out there,
and then they came on active duty. It took me quite
awhile before I could sort them out.
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425608f) 43
EFOP SECRET//SI)
You stayed there as a civilian until '41, was it?
No, -I- came • .'Jr went on active duty in October '40.
Oh, ok.
You see, I got a reserve commission ••.
Ok.
I got a reserve commission in '36. That's where I •...
That's where I want to take up to, right.
J That's, yeah ••. ,so I sort of came in the back door.
How did you get that?
~ ~C~U~R~R~I~E~R~.~~~~~I~.~--.-=--~~--~~~~~~~~~~----~~---
CURRIER: Well, I was going to George Washington at night.
At the end of the first year, Joe Wenger somehow
planted the seed, and I've forgotten exactly what
he said now, so I applied for a commission through ~
" ONr1
.__5t:hrough OP-20-G and ONI as Ensign c~x, USNR. And
got a long letter back saying that I wasn't qualified.
Then there was an exchange of correspondence and I
don't remember precisely who wrote what or I don't
know that I ever saw it all, but eventually I got
another saying that I was qualified-..)and they'd be very ~
pleased to grant me a commission, provided •.• )there were
certain pr~visos, and I've forgotten what they were, ~
~,that I do certain correspondence work and take
certain courses. I did one in navigation and one in
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fi"OP SECRET.I/SI)
weather and .. ~ /can't remember/ .......Ynot important. Anyway,
I lived up to my end of the bargain and I kept my
commission and then I went on active duty in ~
October 1940, and, let's see, I'm trying to think when ..• /
yeah, it must have been October 1940.
But they didn't activate you immediately in 1936?
No, no, no. I worked as a civilian. I worked as a
civilian from 1936 to 1940.
Ok; when you got your commission, did you stay right
in the same job, in a given section.
I stayed right in the same job and I did as many things
as I did before I got my commission. It didn't seem
to make any difference at all, because I .... I guess
you have to understand (1) the section was small;
there were very few people there who were really
competent~ Some very nice guys, a couple of old
chiefs, some very pleasant people, some translators,
Mrs. Driscoll, Aggie and her cohorts, a bunch in the
back room, but there was no one there who really had
any dynamism about him; any punch, and I felt quite
free to roam, as I did, as I always have, I guess,
and I determined what problems were there to be done,
arranged that I got whatever traffic I wanted to work
on ..•• did what I had to do, and then when I finished
what I was doing; I went on to something else~ So
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425608f) 45
ear SECRET//SI)
that, the section being small, and while there was
an officer in charge at all times, he never knew,
couldn't •. ~.he wasn't a technician •. ~he didn't know
what was going on, except in a very general sort of
a way. He could not assign duties, because he didn't
know precisely what duties there were to be assigned.
and so that it was simply a matter of looking around
to see what there was .••. this all in retrospect now;
I don't think these thoughts went through my mind
at the time, but I do know that it was all to me
really great fun. I never enjoyed myself as much.
There was so much to be done and it was all pleasant
doing and a little bit exciting. The •. ~~breaking
your system and reading it and finding out who did
it and where it came from, that sort of thing, was
just great fun to me and it always has been. I
never cease to enjoy doing that sort of thing. I
don't mind, or haven't minded over the years
arranging for someone else to do it, or explaining
to someone else how it should be done and organizing
and administering the group~ but I much prefer to
do it myselL
. ~1ii-£~t4·e Sir; an increase in traffic toward the end of '39 and
'40. Was there a buildup of traffic before the war
started? Did you notice that?
ear SECRET.I.ISi)
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425608f) • 46
B°"OP SECRET.I/SI) No, I don't remember noticing it. I'm sure there was;
I'm absolutely positive that there was. The period
from, let's see •.•. '3~ ... I'm trying to think ••.. yeah,
after the .••• '39 and '40 when there was a war in Europe,
and when we began calling in reserves among whom Raven
was among that first group of four, and he began
building up with other odds and ends of people from
various universities around about the country ....
yes, there were increases in all sorts of traffic
and that the organization at that time was beginning
to grow. By 1939, it had increased from, let's say a
total of I don't know, 50 or so up to possibly 100
or 150 and we •••• I remember we got additional space
up the hall and set up a new section of the .... yes,
there was growth, and it was noticeable.
This is still the navy building?
Oh yes, still down in 6th wing, yeah.
You were in the 6th wing, weren't you?
Yeah, yeah.
Could I ask you, Captain, as you've said and as we
know, ever since 1905, certainly World War I, we have
been concerned with the Japanese navy.
Yes.
As it began to get later into the 1930s and war
actually broke out in Europe, did we evidence any
concern with the German navy within OP-20-G?
EfOP SECRET.I.ISi)
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CURRIER:
SCHOR RECK:
·. ·~ CUR:lU ER:
SCHORRECK:
CURRIER:
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CURRIER:
"
',.
47
EFOP SECRET.I/SI)
Not within OP-20-G, no. '.,
W~1 do you suppose that was, sir?
I don't think I knew why at the time. I 1 m tryin~ to
think why it must have been. We did ••. we intercepted i
I i -
some traffic on the Atlantic side, and I think that
even in 1939 I'm pretty certain that there must have
be.enm-some" subm.~r in~ traffic int~rcepted, but I had ' ~ '
i' not~ing to do with it and the rea~on that I find. it
difficult to answer the question i~ th~t I knew.v~ry
little of what was going on. I knew that the traffic
was there, but I don't think anyone was working on it,
and for this reason, I .don't think that OP-20G paid
any special attention to the Germany navy. I don't
think so. You might get a different opinion from someone
else, but I don't think so.
Did you know at the time, or did you know at a.ny time
that Friedman had, in fact, purchased a commercial
Enigma in 1929, 1930?
No, I didn't know that. It doesn't surprise me; I
mean they were commercially available and •••
Did you know that? Were you all aware of that?
I perscinaily was not aware of that, no, but in
retrospect I know .••
They were ...• they were •.•
.Yeah.
EFOP 6ECRETi_/SI) ... -;
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CU.RRI~R:
FARLEY:
CURRIER:
SCHORRECK:
FARLEY:
CURRIER:
SCHOEREC;K ]'fl • -: •
CURRIER:
. .. ~.
',
. -'·'· ..
425608 .-. WOP SEGRET/./61) • 48
Yeah, are w~ ready to go on to the trip? .
What time is it?
It's ten ••• do you want to take a break?
Do you mind·if I just take ••••• can I get some ••••••
Are we about 1949?
Well, we're going to, but I want to talk about the
circumstances, the situatio~ ~ha~ led to yo~r trip to ..
Englanp •. Can you give us a little background on :why?
Yeah, well, yeah well ••••
••• and _how you were selected.
I can'i answer either one of those two questions· ..
honestly, but the first I heard of this was sometime ••• ·
must .h~ve be~~ about October, and I think the reason
that I went on active duty in October was so that I
~ould take the trip. I think this is true. Now, I
did not know anything about the high-level talks that
w·e.re going on that set the trip up, particularly the
heads of government arrangements which had to be made
before the trip was, in fact, decided upon. I did
.'
hear rumblings of ••• disagreements ••• that there was some •••
felt that we should not make the trip. I felt that the
army pressed it, and I'm pretty.certain that the· navy
felt that this was an inappropriate time for us to be
doing this sort of thing. This sort of filtered down.
I have no way of knowing where the opinions came from
or how strongly they were held.
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SCHORRECK: Do you think there had been some talk between our
goverDments? We've never seen that.
CURRIER: I know that there had been some ta~k between them.
I know it was set up in advance and I think if you will
remember the visit ••• of Tizzard ••• in which he exchanged
a certain amount of high-level technical scientific
information, and I think, and I'm not absolutely certain,
but I think at that time, and I don't remember the date
for that, but the way, or the month, that Churchill,
is alleged to have told Tizzard to look into the
possibility of an exchange. Precisely how he did it
or with whom he talked, I do not know, but sometime·
not all that long after that occ~rrence, Tizz~rd's
visit, high-level conversati~ns were itarted, and it.
was eventually ~gree~ at a very high level that such
a visit would be undertaken. The army Were all fdr
it. Friedman, parti~ularly, wanted the visit to take
place ~nd wanted to go, and I think, although I've
never beeQ told, I think he wanted to go alone •••• I
think. The disagreement on the part of the navy, I
think, came from ONI, ,but again, I'm guessing, and
I think the Chief of Naval Operations was convinced
that perhaps we shouldn't do it, but he was overrqled.
The deci~~on was taken at a higher level and an
arrangement was made that the group "maybe one"
0COP SECRET/ISi)
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4256081) WOP SECRET//31) 50
should go. Sometime about .... it must have been in
October. These dates, you should be able to check,
because I think that this is fairly public knowledge, but
it would be a good idea to go back to check this, because
I think you could put it together properly. Friedman
had his breakdown; went to the hospital. I remember
this, so it must have been in October. It may have
been a little bit earlier. At that point the plans
had to be changed. The decision remained .•.. we were
going to exchange information. At that point, a
team was chosen, two from the army and two from the
navy. Why I was chosen, I haven't the foggiest, except
that I guess there wasn't anybody else around who knew
enough to do it. That was probably it. We didn't
have, we really didn't have very many experienced people,
even then. We had a lot of people who came in on active
duty and we had a lot of regular duty .•• regular navy
people who were assigned to OP-20 who had done training
courses, special communications training courses. They
came for a year, two years •.•• Bob Weeks was one of them.
He was here and he and I were chosen. I suppose I
was chosen because I could be called to active duty,
I had had a certain amount of experience, I did know
what most of this was all about, and it would be well
to have someone along who did. Bob Weeks did not know
very much about it.
WOP SECRET.I/SI)
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I
,o ,, 1117 H1/l. e--1) f'.O )t:;-w' i,v.
;IV p~-r. !'i 39 .
~ fjq/q/
0COP SECRET.I/SI)
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EFOP SECRET/.i'SI)
FARLEY: Were you a junior officer then, Captain?
CURRIER: I was a very junior officer.
FARLEY: You were just the lower ...
CURRIER: I was a JG.
FARLEY: Oh, ok.
SCHORRECK: As you look at it, behind Wenger you were probably
the only other person who knew as much as he did.
CURRIER: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think that's right.
SCHORRECK: Going back to the 30s .••. '32 .•••
FARLEY: It's about ready .•.. . :.~~··
CURRIER: So I think there were probably fairly ~ood reasons
for choosing me. I was the one who was there.
Anyway, the army chose, as you know, Sinkdv and
Rosen. Sinkov was an old hand. He'd been around.
He came to work in .•••
SCl-JORRECK: 1930.
CURRIER: •.. '31 .• '3 •.•. 1930, and Rosen came along somewhat
later, late '30s I think.
SCHORRECK: '36, '37.
CURRIER: Yeah, anyway, we got together; we didn't actually get
together before we went. We never had ••. as I recall •..
we never had a meeting; the four of us neyer sat down
and talked among ourselves as to what we were bringing,
what we were going to do, or what our duties were.
or would be when we got there •••. never.
EFOP SECRET//SI)
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FARLEY: No plan of attack at all?
CURRIER: Nope, no, now this ••.•
SCHORRECK: But you and Bob Weeks were briefed.
CURRIER: Briefed very briefly •••• no ... unless my memory fails me
completely, I do not remember being told anything except
"watch your step" .••• see to it that we get whatever you
think we should get and have a look around
SCHORRECK: What were you told then •.•• what were you told to give
them?
CURRIER: I knew what we were bringing. There was no secret here.
We had the Purple machine; we had the Red machine; we
had all of the JN-25 codebooks, recoveries, and additive
lists. We had DF manuals; we had all of the navy RIFs
on intercept operation DELOT, that sort of thing. That
list of material, by the way, is available. It came
out in several places. One was the Chicago Tribune.
SCHORRECK: Yeah.
CURRIER: Anyway, that material was known. We all knew what we
had. Was no ... and the British knew what we had, so
there wasn't any ••. there were no secrets there. What
we were not told is what we were supposed to get.
SCHOR RECK: Could you talk about the ••. about the ECM or the SIGABA?
CURRIER: A •••• that
FARLEY: Would you hold one second while I •.••
WOP SECRET//81)
END TAPE .1, Si de 2
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EFOP SECRET//81)
53
Ask him again Hank.
Were you told anything about what you could say about our
ECM and the Sigaba?
The answer is no, we were not told. It never, as far as
I can remember it never even came up in the conversation,
in the discussions or our briefings before we left. The
Army people think often Rosen may have been, may have
been told, but we were not, no.
So the four of you never met together?
We never, my recollection is that we never met together
until we met down on the dock in Annapolis on our way, on
the KING GEORGE. I'm sure that arrangements were made;
why we never actually we called together and briefed as a
group, I don't know, but we weren't. I think, now, I
think probably I can explain it. It was still, the
dichotomy existed and we were two, we were two separate
nations even at that point, really were. And there was,
it, the, and the distrust and sort of background ill
feeling went right to the top. It wasn't just, it wasn't
just the ••.•
They permeated both organizations.
Yeah, yeah, it did, it really did.
How were your individual relations with Sinkov and Rosen?
Fine, no problems at all. I never felt there was a
problem you see.
What was your impression particularly of Leo Rosen?
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A ••• golly, you see I, I don't know,
At that time.
Yeah at that time. I thought he was a brash young New
York Jew and he didn't sit too well with me; didn't
dislike him, but I didn't think at the time I would have
wanted him for a close personal friend. I hope this sort
of thing by the way doesn't get outside.
How, what is, how about his, were you at all aware of his
abilities or?
No, no, none at all. I did know Sinkov because I had
worked with him on a couple of minor problems and I had
also worked with him on the Voynich manuscript with
Sinkov, and I talked with him on several occasions about
it and he and I and Rowlett, I remember going over some
pages of the Voynich manuscript, so that I knew, I knew
Abe, but I had never met Rosen, and I can remember •..•
speaking of Rosen, I remember one night some time up in
Bletchley we were out for dinner with some people who
lived somewhere, Layton Buzzard Way, I've forgotten now
exactly and we had a little sort of sherry party which
they had taken great pains to get the sherry together for,
and Rosen was talking with one of the wives and they were
talking about Vassar. And, oh yes, Rosen said he had
several girlfriends at Vassar, one of whom was Lisa
Morganthal, and then it occurred to me that all the people
that he mentioned were all Jewish and I was, and I heard
him in sort of the background role, British voices around
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4256088 0COP SECRET.I/SI)
55
here, I heard this New York voice talking about all these
Jews and I began to wonder how it was filtering through and
how it stood with the others. As a matter of fact it was
noticed that Sinkov and Rosen were both army and both
Jewish and that we were both navy and were both Gentiles
and this did not pass unnoticed I can assure you, it
really didn't. It didn't really prevent things from
happening. We had for instance, we were both given a car
and a driver, we never rode in the same car. Bob Weeks
and I rode in one car and Sinkov and Rosen rode in another
car. We had our own car and our own driver and our own
petrol coupons and we never rode together.
That's amazing.
That's carrying the separate services to extremes, isn't it?
Well I guess there were probably reasons for it, they
figured that there were four of us and it would be
uncomfortable in the back seat of a war department sedan
with four· people and they figured they had to have two
cars anyway and then the natural way of dividing up four
people, two of whom were army and two navy, to say nothing
of Jewish and Gentile, was down the middle. So that's
the way it happened.
When you got to Annapolis was it a secret mission, did
they smuggle you down there at midnight?
Yeah, no, we went down in the daylight but it was supposed
to be a secret mission, but of course everybody knew about
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4256088 56
Btor SECRET//81)
it by the time we got there. In fact my wife knew about
it. I left home, she ••• Mary Wenger called her and said
that she had had a friend in Annapolis who just by chance e....
had sawn •.• seen Pres Currier and Bob Weaks down on the ,__...
dock in Anapolis with a lot of baggage. We, so, when I
left, my wife didn't know where I was going or when
I'd be ' back.
Is that right?
Yeah, yeah she didn't know. But she knew, she knew before
I left this country how I was going; that I had gone to
Annapolis and that I was waiting on the dock of Annapolis
with a lot of baggage.
It's hard for me to picture, I know Annapolis so well,
where did the boat come in.
Well she didn't, she was tied up out on the roads about
two miles out, oh yeah.
Yeah, out in the middle of the channel.
Yeah and we had to wait until Lord Halifax came ashore
and that was the reason we were sitting around waiting.
We had the motor launches all ready, in fact we had the
gear loaded, we had a lot of it of course, loaded in two
motor launches but we didn't, it was rough and we didn't
want to go out and bounce around out there and get
everything all wet while we were waiting for him to come
ashore. So we waited on the dock until we learned that
he was about to l ea ve , I'm told. We then we nt out but we
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got there early and we still had to circle around in the
rain and waves and so on. We kept reasonably dry, but
I was worried more about our gear and it was all in wooden
crates and I trust it was waterproofed inside. But that
was our only real concern.
FARLEY: Did you •.. wer~ you given sidearms at all to protect?
CURRIER: No, never had any sidearms. There's something which
nobody knows except me and I've never told anyone before
and I hope you take it off the tape, but I had a little
police special which I had bought sometime before and I
figured that as long as I was going into a war zone that
I might as well, since nobody else was giving me anything
I'd better put it in my pocket which I did. About a week
after I'd been aboard the KING GEORGE I left it down in
my cabin in a drawer. I didn't tell anyone; I should've
told someone on the ship about it, I didn't. About
a week after I went aboard we were somewhere, we'd gone
down, we went down to pick up a beef convoy that right,
we were in the mid Atlantic, it disappeared and I had to
tell the exec about it and he was very upset to have a
loose, in fact I had, I take it back, I did show it, no I
take it back, I did talk to the exec about it before and
told him about it and told him I had it, I did do that.
But then it was stolen and he was, he was really quite
upset. He said," We'll have to tell the Captain about it,
we can't have stray firearms around this ship that we
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can't control." So they had a search of the ship conducted
very discretely. I don't think anyone except me, maybe a
couple of others, knew that it was going on, and they never
found it. I suspect it was thrown overboard and I lost
it. But no, I never told that to anyone and no one else
knows it as far as I know.
FARLEY: But I'm surprised the Navy didn't give you some sidearms
or something.
CURRIER: No, no, no, we didn't have it.
FARLEY: They didn't consider that sensitive equipment in those days.
CURRIER: Well we figured it would be aboard a battleship crossing
the Atlantic and what good was sidearms if we were to be
torpedoed or,·so I don't think there was any real reason
giving us sidearms.
FARLEY: So it took you what ••• five days to cross the Atlantic?
CURRIER: Oh good Lord we were two weeks.
FARLEY: SwuJJ'1
Well you s-wo-o-med down by toward Argentina then?
CURRIER: Oh yeah, we went down and picked up a beef convoy and
joined the escort and they .•.• we had to keep pace with the
slowest ship in the convoy which is 11-12 knots. In fact
we lost a few on the way. And then when we approached
the submarine zone we got additional escort. A convoy
broke off and went into the channel and, we went up to XAi<b<1Aoc/(fU. __ /1 Scarba, up around Ireland and up to Sea-~ba and put in,
/I put ·in ~Q.a. -- This was prearranged, that's where we
were going, that's where the KING GEORGE was going anyway
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and when we arrived the Naval Attach~s office of course had
word that we were coming, and sent up a young fellow
named McDonald, who was one of the Junior Assistant
attaches, who made arrangements to get us and our equipment
flown· south in ~hort flying boats. When he found out how ,.,__.¥
big our, our crates were, it was discovered that only one
of them would go through the hatch in the flying boat so 5 C-Q.pft .1-
we were marooned in Scaba, we had no way of getting
south, no way that had been previously planned. So the
captain of the KING GEORGE was apprised of this fact~ he
as I recall, cast about to see whether or not there was
any other type of Royal Navy transportation for us south.'
Found out that the NEW-CASTLE was coming the next day,
she'd come from the Med; she'd been out oh, almost two
years without a refit and had been knocked about a bit s~.,
and she was coming up to ~~~ba and was going down the s 'Q f"t--1'+"$ ~;
East Coast to Shiriesse and into the dock')'ard there for
refit. So he apparently individually arranged for us to
NEWCASTLE. • aboard the So he got a trawler alongq.ide
and we loaded all our gear on the trawler and took it
---across to-the NEW CASTLE. There was no place to store
it below decks so we had to store it above deck, but it
-
go
./ ...
was done' admirably, so we didn't loose anything. The
skipper of the NEW tASTLE was a man named Rhory 0 'Connor, ......-··
he wrote ·the seaman's hymn. He was a real character, he
wore, his coat was brilliant red and he wore high-sea
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boots above his knees. He was a real, a real skipper,
was really quite a man. Anyway, we got everything stowed
and were assigned ~abin space and we were to have left
sometime in the •••• during the course of the night. On the
way down we caught up with a convoy going down the east
coast swept channel, ~hich was kept swept all the way -;J . ,..;,,. 1· -, '/1..;,., ... .;,. ,:;•.:- ,.,,,, J '· / ,,
~16ng,the coast and down through to the Demvesturary(?).
We caught up to the convoy and, just about daylight .•. we
were not part of the escort, we wanted to get by it and
get on, but there was a, a stuka came over and spotted
the convoy and, us as part of the escort of course,
and we knew that then something was, something was about
to happen cause this was too good a target to miss. So
along, not long before two more stukas appeared and I
was down below, let's see, yeah I was down below in the
ward room eating, trying to eat some lunch and the first
thing I knew was I heard this terrific explosion and
the ship just sort of moved over this way you see, and I
was so scared I couldn't swallow my soup. My mouth went
absolutely dry, couldn't swallow, never had it happen to
me before, well I'd never been really scared before you
know. But then my thoughts went to the gear, and then
they.started straffing see, back and forth across the
ship and sounded like someone dragging a chain across
the deck, steel deck, and I had visions of all this
wonderful gear that we had being punctured, yeah, it
was, they were all on deck in wooden crates. So
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fi"O~ SECRET//SI) I began to think about it, and then I began to think more
about myself and they •• we got a lecture as to how long we
would last· in the water. They say if you, if yoJre.not //"'
picked up in four minutes you've had it and they said put
on·all your heavy clothes and your life jacket and they
said that'll extend your period of survivability for
another three or four minutes probably. And so we did.
Fortunately we riever got really a serious direct hit so
that we survived this and we survived this straffing and
about an hour an a half later we all came up on deck and
we went back to see .•• look at our gear, we expected to see
it just splintered lying all over the place. Not all of
the ammunition that had been used was
explosives, it didn't penetrate the wooden crates, it hit
on the outside and exploded and there was not a single
crate that had been penetrated by any of the machine gun
ammunition. The deck was littered with copper jacketed,
it must have been hundreds and hundreds of them all over
the·aeck and right around the crates, the ones that were
in front and on top had little pock marks in the them
·all over, but fortunately it was a good stout crate,
probably an inch thick, at least, wood, and as far as I
know there was never a penetration of anything else,
didn't touch a thing.
Isn't that amazing.
Yeah it is, it really is, absolutely amazing. And the,
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[OP SECRET.I/SI) 5? ,~ e fp~-"fl ... •· ')I "~i v
•.. so when we'got to Sheaness it was all arranged that the
material should be offloaded and they had cars there for S"h -e e t"'l'i-4 !>c ..
us and we. drove· from Sheaness right up to Bletchley, um, .....--
arrived about, I don't know, ten, eleven o'clock at night
I guess, drove into the grounds in Bletchley and got out,
everything all, of course there were blackout curtains up
everywhere, everything was absolutely black, went through
a doorway with two blackout curtains, one ahead of the
other, walked through into a rather brightly lit office
and there was John Tiltman ... the first time I saw him,
standing there in his regimentals with his hands behind
his back, he and Travis and Dennistn, Denni~on was in v·
charge. And that was coming out of the dark into the
light and seeing the three of them sort of standing
there in a row and John went over to one side like this
and so we all went around and shook hands.
Were you considered the senior officer of the group?
No, Sinkov.
Sinkov was.
He was a major.
Oh, I· see.
Yeah. No, I was the junior officer, Bob Weeks was senior
to me, yeah. Yeah, I had just been promoted to JG in
October· so I was very junior, yeah. In fact I was, let's
see that was, yeah I guess I was 27.
Were the British pretty happy to see you?
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Seemed to be, they ••• c
Welcomed you·grapiously. ~
Yeah, they had, we had wonderful billets, Lord Cadman, ~ s;. ~"" I~ "f ~ ·~ . ~/
who had a place in, called Sendly Park which was not far f/
from Bletchley put us up and we had his entire mansion to
our ••• the four of us, with the entire house staff, butler,
and four maids and a cook and we· all had our own bedroom,
and we were very well taken care of while we were there.
And of course we were driven to work every day and back,
driven to lunch.
Think you want to get into any more details before we
break for lunch, shall we hold off?
T~is i~ a pretty'good plac~ to break.
Yeah, I think it probably is, yeah.
Upon the visit after your arrival at Bletchley Park you
had all the equipment there and you were just, you just
met the·troopers.
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah we met them and were told
where we would be spending our nights. It was really
quite· an interesting.billet so to speak, the best one in
the area I guess. Lord Cadman who was Anglo-Iranian,
· Ahglo-Persian Oil Company and his son who was a thorn in
the side of the people at Bletchley. He was trying to be
helpful. He wanted to work and he wanted to come in and
do something and of course he couldn't do anything and
eventually·he'allied himself •••• this is quite an aside
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with the, I don't whether it was the people who served
the·~oldiers at the same side or what, but anyway he
wanted to be involved you see. Basil was his name, the fl honorable Basil Cadman and he was being very helpful to
us so that he arranged several things for us. For instance,
we went to London twice with him during, just before,
well it was after the big blitz, but while it was still
going on, and we had a tour through the docks, all the
way around and special remarks that he got from somebody,
I don't know where he got it, and we met a dozen people
or so that, this had nothing to do with business, this
was just aside, but something we would never have seen
otherwise.
FARLEY: Was his estate near Bletchley Park?
CURRIER: Yeah, Shenley Park was the, was Cadman's estate, it was
about eight or ten miles
FARLEY: Oh, okay.
CURRIER: Not a very attractive area but a lovely house and completely
staffed, so we were very comfortable.
SCHOR RECK: Was evetything open to you?
CURRIER: As far as I know everything was open. Now I had no way
of knowing whether or not there were certain areas in ••. to
which we were not allowed or didn't go. But each one of
us did more or less what we, what our own services wante
us to do; that is to find out everything we could about
what was going on in the Naval section and in the Army
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65
and Air· sections. And in addition we all ••• the four of us,
for instance, went into Hut 3, Hut 6, where the Bombe was
and the work on the Enigma took place ••••
SCHORRECK: And you actually saw it?
CURRIER: Oh yes,· oh yes. We were there for at least an hour
or two twice, and stayed right there and watched the
entire operation ••• had· all of the techniques explained
in great detail. The only thing that we did not get was
the final writeups of all of the recoveries and precisely
what the various Enigma machines had in common and what
was special to each one of the uses; the Air Force
the Tiger service in the army and regular navy and so
"' on, but we did have a gi:_~at m.~?' made available to us
as much of the technical information as we could
individually absorb. And this meant the precise details
of how they set up, what they did with the traffic, how
they· arranged what the called "menus," which were really ~~bV.Y\~Wi11.S ~ . /
cribs, how they were run, and how the bamberismas worked v
which were two series of three to four inch paper tape
with holes punched in them, which were then matched.
It was a very early-on tape matching problem, with
paper tape, fit in holes, through a scanning device,
and the complete operations of the Bombe from bottom
to top and vice versa, much of it I did not understand
(I wasn't equipped to do it), but Sinkov, I think, probably
got more out of it than anyone else. Rosen, probably
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too, but neither Bob Weeks nor I had that kind of
background so that .•.• while I knew what was going on,
and I appreciated everything I was being told, we were not
able to get as much from it as I think probably Sinkov
and Rosen did. I never saw what they wrote, so .••
FARLEY: Were you permitted to take notes?
CURRIER: Yeah.
FARLEY: Were you?
CURRIER: Yeah, sure. Took all the notes, in fact, I spent a lot
of time going out and talking to people and just taking
code groups, and, as I say, doing such menial things
as tracing the German submarine charts and getting all
the lower level systems, the hours of operation of the
systems with the E-Boats in the channel, and all the
naval items I could think of.
SCHORRECK: What did you do with your notes when you returned?
CURRIER: Oh, they all came back in a great big .•. several great
bundles through the embassy. We didn't, as I recall,
bring any notes with us. We did •.• one of the things
we did, of course, we made trips all over the U.K.
Bob Weeks and I, for instance, went up to York •.• to
Scarborough, where one of the principal navy intercept
stations was, and visited up there for two days and
went through the entire intercept operation at
Scarborough and were briefed on all of the others,
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67
but this was an example of what went on. We visited ~ ~ v
a WRAN hostel and were introduced to all of the WRANs.
They informed me that this was apparently a standard /;
sort of navy joke - there were two kinds of WRANs, v E E
mobile WRANs and immobile WRANs, which is, in fact, {./
r true, but the mobile WRANs were those who could be ~/
E transferred overseas and the immobile WRANs were 1,..,.,
those who had to stay home.
I wonder how they differentiated them?
Qualifications, you know, and attitude and age •..
Age probably.
Age, I think, I don't know precisely what they thought,
but then we spent a lot of time up there and we went
1-'t: v~ through their OF installation and talked their a man
named Brooke, who was a young scientist from Cambridge,
who was running their OF operation.
SCHORRECK: How did you think that their setup compared to ours
in terms of intercept site?
CURRIER: Well, a .••• our intercept sites at that time .... I hadn't
been in one,· except, let's see ••.•
SCHORRECK: Oh, that's right, you had come back from the Philippines.
CURRIER: Yeah, this was five years after I •••.
SCHORRECK: It had been five years •.
CURRIER: •.. so I really had nothing to compare it with, but I
knew roughly how many people we had in our intercept
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stations, and I knew where they were, but I had
had n ' t ever 1 v i s i t e d one . One o f the pr i n c i pa 1 d i f fer enc es , ...,...
of course, in their operation and ours was the fact that
they continued all through the war to use pencil and paper.
There was never a typewriter anywhere within a mile of any
of their intercept stations. And all of their copy was
hand-copied and they prod •.•• yeah, they produced two or
three carbons •••. one or two carbons, and that's it.
And they were on, of course, all this on 14" pieces of
paper .••• some 10" .••• bigger than legal size, and this
involved tons of paper, of course, so that their handling
was something which was fairly primitive, but it had to
be, because everything ••.• when you consider, everything
that's copied is in hand, in pencil, on a large piece
of p~~er, each one of which has to be handled, and
numbered and filed and transported and •.• so that .•• this
at the receiving end at Bletchley, when these enormous
great crates of intercepts came in .•. large cardboard
boxes with thousands and thousands and thousands of
pieces of paper, this involved a sorting and handling
problem that we did not have to contend with. The .••
after we left Scarborough, we arranged to go out to
Chelmsford to look at the latest Marconi DF equipment,
and we were authorized then to bring back an entire
DF system; that is, all the antennae ••. not the receivers,
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but all the antennas, and the internal systems for
everything except the receivers. We did that and that
was one of the things which made it very difficult when
we came back.
FARLEY: Was their equipment more sophisticated than ours?
CURRIER: Yeah ••••
FARLEY: Their DF?
CURRIER: Yes, yeah, their DF was better than ours and that was
one of the reasons that we wanted to get a copy of
their ad hoc system was better than ours.
FARLEY: Did you have free roam or did you have a British escort
throughout your tour of the ?
CURRIER: I had complete •••• well, we didn't have ..• we had ..• yeah,
someone came with us.always. We had to because we
didn't know obviously where we were going, but •.• and
we had to be shown through these various places, but
when we went to , I don't remember now who -------actually ..•• ! think maybe Joe Loomis came with us.
I think he did. He was NID-2, yeah ••• he was a
Lieutenant Commander. I think he came with us out
to And he also came with us down
to that's right, we went down to fly
------, another inter •••• naval intercept station
down near· , but we .••• when we went to ----------Chelmsford, he just took us out there and we went
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in and talked with the ..• talked with the people who
knew Marconi installation, and went out and looked over
all their equipment and went into an operating section
where they had them and we reviewed the operation of the
equipment_ and we'd give them a lot of figures on its
reliability and that sort of thing. We didn't have
time to check, but it looked pretty good.
Were you and Sinkov and Weeks and Rosen housed in the
same area?
Yeah, we were all at Shenley Park, yeah.
Did you get a chance to compare notes in the evenings, or
s~y • ••.
Yeah, we did. I don't remember a great deal of actual
note comparing; we didn't •.• we talked over what we had
done in a general sort of way. This is one of the things
we probably did, but I cannot remember very much about
it. I'm sure, for instance, when we left the operation
hut, in •.. or in HUT-3, the Bombe, that we did, in fact,
sit down and discuss what we had seen and find out
whether or not we all understood what we were being
shown, but my recollection is that Sinkov really took
charge pretty much of this part of it, because I simply
didn't have the background. As I say, I knew what I'd
seen and I knew what the operation was and what the
problem was, but I didn't understand as much of the
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detail of the operation of the Bombe, perhaps as they
did. And Bob Weeks understood none. All of the
hullabaloo about giving us information on the Enigma, which
was made so much of, and has been since made more of,
didn't strike me, at least in my recollection, that it
happened quite that way. The ..• we did not return with
anything but our own notes and our own impression of
the way it worked and what the problem was and how to
handle it. This was covered in as much detail as we
could and in oral briefings when we got back. The
fuss arose when, I think, the decision was made not to
give us any hardware at all, and this caused pretty
much of a fuss back here. I was not aware of it,
because it didn't bother me at all. I wouldn't have
been involved in it anyway, and I didn't ... ! didn't
really know that we were ••• that we might have been
able to bring back some of the actual hardware. When
we got back, the upper-level discussions that went
on to review what we had gotten and whether or not
we had gotten all we should have, apparently ended up
in a d~cision that we would go back and say that we
thought we had •.• our people thought we had been slightly
short-changed and could we have an additional meeting
and such about the Enigma and the Bombe, which, in
fact, took place, and it was then arranged that some time
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in '4 ••••• Art Levenson can tell you because he went
over in the first batch.
To Bletchley?
To Bletchley, yes. He and Ollie Kirby and Bill Monday and
Joe Louvis •• ~all of whom which you talked to.
That was the beginning of '43?
It was the end of '42 of the beginning of '43, I don't V
remember when it actually happened, but when it did
happen, I was divorced from the Atlantic side completely
and was entirely on the Pacific then, so I don't know
what happened, but Art Levenson can tell you precisely
what happened and when it happened and Howie Campaigne \/'.
can too. He and, as I say, there was a group of about •••
what ••• 30-40 went over to work in Bletchley for the
rest of the war, and I think they probably went over
sometime before these people~ I've forgotten exactly.
In fact, that's where Art Levenson met Midge. OGA
Is that right?
Yeah.
\\\
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4256089 fi"OP SECRET//81)
73 OGA
...._ ______________ ___.!if I remember right •.. something
like that. Anyway, yeah, they were married during the
war in London.
So the navy was quite open; the British navy was quite
open with you?
Completely open as far as •... yeah, absolutely completely
open. There was nothing that I could determine that was
being withheld. As far as I could see, the entire naval
section which was under ~rank Birch, who was a real
character •••. he, by the way, has written a naval history
which you must have a copy of.
He's in the GC&CS history.
Yeah?
Yes.
He wrote the naval section.
Yeah.
And that's his, yes, yeah. As a matter of fact, you know,
I would have thought that it would be worth, if you
haven't already done it, going through the GC&CS history,
taking out the early portions written by each one of
the individuals who wrote the section, correlating it,
and sort of using it as supplementary information on
our version of this trip. I think you may find something
in there that would be of use, because I'm pretty •••• I
haven't read ••.
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ear SECRET//51)
SCHORRECK: I'm not sure that they'd discussed that trip.
FARLEY: If so, very casually, right.
CURRIER: Look in the •••
SCHORRECK: The Brigadier ••.• I've talked to the Brigadier about it •••
CURRIER: Yeah.
SCHORRECK: But I'm not sure that I've seen it in the GC&CS history.
I'll look for it.
CURRIER: Look in Frank Birch's section; in the naval section and
see what he has to say.
FARLEY: At any time did the British caution you that this is
very sensitive information?
CURRIER: No. They assumed that we knew it.
FARLEY: Ok.
CURRIER: Yeah •••
FARLEY: Because we get the impression all the time that the
British really didn't want to talk about it .... didn't
want to tell the Americans much about it, because they
had some security compromises earlier and they didn't
want to •••
SCHORRECK: Well Redman has furthered that. His comment was that
~
they postp~oned the war in the Atlantic a year because v
they didn't give us anything, when that's not true.
CURRIER: No, Redman was a crank. I hope some of these things
that I'm saying won't get beyond this tape. He was
a very talented, patriotic naval officer with a capital
"N."
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75
Jack?
Jack Redman, and as a matter of fact, the older brother
That was the older brother.
And they were the thorns in the side of this arrangement
for months after. And in the majority of cases, they
had very little reason for feeling the way they did,
as far as I'm concerned. They didn't like the British
in the first place, and whenever they got an opportunity
to give them the shaft, they did, and it was unfortunate,
and I think that many of the things that they say should
be reviewed considerably before you take them at face
value.
Well, this is where some of the high-level opposition
was coming from in the first place, wasn't it •••
without even knowing it.
That's right, yeah. Well, I think you'll find that
John Tiltman will tell you about the Redm •••• he probably
has ... about his dealings with the Redmans.
Jack?
Yeah.
I know he told us about the business of the collaboration. e e ~, sT"Gl"'t -e.
He said that there was some initial l!'Ssonan£e on the
part of the British, but then he told them, "You can't
do that; they've come here and you've got to allow them
to see what's available."
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There was apparently some .•.
And they did.
...• some feeling that •.. and they did .•. there was still
some things that they withheld on •.. ab .... principally
about the Enigma, and how they obtained it originally
and precisely what the situation was, but we had -,,,e..
absolutely untrampled access and we could have taken
all the notes in the world that we wanted to, with
their blessing. It may be that we didn't do as good
a job as we might have done, but I didn't do as good
a job as I might have done, because I didn't know
enough. I took what we were given, but I was not
aware of the problem in any detail, so I just damned
well didn't know how much was available and what I
should do.
Did the British ever indicate the Polish contribution to
the solution of the Enigma?
Well, not at that time. Not until somewhat later .••
no, not at that time. No, these were the sort of things
"' that we withheld, yeah.
Was there any kind of agreement that was signed between
our navy and their navy, just between the two services?
Um • •••
Or used to negotiate such an agreement?
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SCHORRECK:
CURRIER:
SCHORRECK:
CURRIER:
SCHORRECK:
CURRIER:
FARLEY:
4256089 EfOP SECRET//81)
No, what I'm trying to think was ••. the only agreement
that was signed between the two navies was when I brought
back a four-digit code system and additive books to be
used for communications between us and the Admiralty.
But there was no overall agreement that I know about ••••
that I had anything to do with, signed between the two
sections, no.
I think that kind of
Do you want to talk about names, people?
Did you run into any of the people who've since become
prominent ••.• Knox •••• Josh Cooper?
Oh, Josh Cooper's a good friend of mine. I know him
quite well.
Really?
Oh, sure.
What was your impression of these counterparts in terms
of cryptanalytic ability?
Well, I don't kn ••. I guess I did think about it, but
my own feeling was that in the main, they were several
notches above us as far as actual ability was concerned.
Particulary those young mathematicians who were on the
Enigma and . the Bombe •••• very impressive. I mean, Turing
Alexander, a •••••
Hugh Foss, or Frank Birch?
0COP SECRET//81)
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4256089 EFOP SECRET/.i'SI)
78
Yeah well, Frank Bir •••. Hugh Foss and Frank •.• Hugh Foss
was a funny fellow, but he wasn't a mathe •••.
R.E. Jones?
Yeah, Jo ... well •... yeah, he was ... not the name I'm trying
to think of. Another mathematician in .... anyway, it's
not important, but they were all .•. they were all absolutely
first-rate mathematicians. They were people like Howie
Cam~aigne, Marshall Hall, a ...... who were the other two
from MIT ••. anyway, they were people of that ilk, and those
groups were equal in ability and talent. There's no doubt
in my mind, and we took over as you probably know in the
following year and set up in a separate building out there
in Nebraska Avenue .•• our operation on the Enigma and
improved it considerably.
SCHORRECK: Right.
CURRIER: Yeah.
SCHORRECK: You were aware •.. I found some documents from the
British in '43 ••.. late '43, saying that ... they were
letters to OP-20G saying that the navy had done
such a good job in solving the four-wheel Enigma ...
CURRIER: Yeah •..
SCHORRECK: ••.• that the British weren't even going to bother
with it anymore. That they were going to put their
efforts on the three wheel. They couldn't solve the
four wheel. We did.
EFOP SEGRET/l51)
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4256089 EFOP SECRET//SI) 79
CURRIER: Yeah, that was when we •.. that was when we produced
our version of the Bombe.
SCHORRECK: That's right; that's exactly so. We started supplying
CURRIER:
Bombes to the British, but they won't want to admit
that now.
Well,,certainly Raven can tell you a lot more about
that. Howie Campaignlcan tell you a great deal about
it.
SCHORRECK: You're going to have to talk to Campaigne.
CURRIER: He must, because you'll get most of that from him
and all of his cohorts who were working right in
the section at the time. Bob Ely ..•
SCHORRECK: That's another name.
CURRIER: He's a Philadelphia lawyer.
SCHORRECK: Is he?
CURRIER: Yeah. I haven't seen him for 12-15 years I guess.
I think John Tiltman's kept in touch with him on and
off over the years. How long it's been since he's
seen him, I don't know, but he'd be a good one to
talk to. He came with Raven at the end of 1940.
FARLEY: Anything more on the visit, Henry?
SCHORRECK: I think we can push on.
CURRIER: A ••••
F~RLEY: Let me switch tapes •.•.
End Tape 2, Side 1
B°"OP SECRET.I/SI)
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[OP Sr!GRET//SI)
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4256088 80
WOP SECRET//81)
BEGIN TAPE 3, Side 1
..• three for Captain Currier.
.••• what we brought out .•..
Yeah, this is what I was just trying to think whether
there was anything else that actually went on that was
of any real importance, rather than just anecdotal.
Did you get any ..•• did you get any idea that the
British were working on the Soviet traffic?
No, none at all. I personally do not think that
they were, during the war, but they did immediately
after the war. They were able to pick up, I think
perhaps more quickly than we, because we started ...
when I went to the Russian language school ... you don't
have to take this down if you don't want to ....
No, I'll take it down.
That's fine.
..• but I went to the Russian language school in September
1945, which was only a month after the war, and when
I came back in June of '46, we had already ... had
going in full force our Russian section on
Nebraska Avenue, and that was one of the principal
reasons that I went over to GCHQ as •.. I was the .•.. I
don't know what they call it •.. I guess the Senior
Cryptanalytic Liaison Officer, or something. I don't
know, I may not even have had a title, but that was the
WOP SECRET.I/SI)
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4256088 WOP SECRET/.i'SI) .6 ;:;~i~; 81 PL 86-36/50 USC 3605
principal problem. j._ _____ __.l~Z then on, that was
the problem on both sides of the Atlantic\.
Was there another name for tb~t before ••.•.
Beforel..._~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~___.11--Bourbon?
Bourbon was any Russianas I recall.
Yeah.
Anything Russian was Bourbon.
Right.
We had been getting some of that auring the war~ hadn't
we?
As far as I know, I never saw any Russian traffic during
the war. Now whether or not there was any lying around,
or whether we were intercepting any, inadvertently, I
honestly don't know. I guess we could find out, but I
really don't know. I never saw an and I never had
anything to do with it, but
WOP SEGRET//SI)
Page 89
4256081) PL 8fr--3El/SQ US<::; 3605
WOP SECRET/./81) 82
the~~lllel ________ ..,.... _______ __./and so that when I came
back in '48 to Nebraska Avenue,
job, our entire Russi~ri-section
we took over the "in"
~~s ... l _____ .... land we
: ::: :: i: 1: a: f ~:r.__e_h_i_g_h_-_l P_x_V_,J~ l: f:: rt S
in fact, all ••• most,
on both sides of the
the good people were working it.
SCHORRECK: Was your purpose in that visit the same as it had been
in '40 •.• to collaborate on the Russian?
CURRIER: It was a two-year tour, one of the first after the war
to further the collaboration because it was ••. it was the
crypt liaison side of it for the ••. for all of us. The
army had one man there ••• two, in fact, we had two and the
army had two. Dale Marston and Cecil Phillips and, let's
see, who else was there •••• Patton. He was there for a
year, Phil Patton.
. SCHORRECK: Cecil Phillips later became involved in the •.. with the
Russian agent ••.
CURRIER: Yeah.
SCHORRECK: ••• problem.
FARLEY: Is he still around?
SCHORRECK: Yeah.
CURRIER: Yeah, he's still ••• ! saw him this morning.
FARLEY: He's still in the building then.
CURRIER: Yeah.
FARLEY: Good, I'll talk to him.
EFOP SEG~ET/i51)
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425608. EFOP SECRET/.i'SI) EO 3.3b(6)
CURRIER:
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SCHORRECK:
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EO 3.3b(3) EO 3.3b(6) PL 86-36/50 USC 3605
83
Yeah, he was there. I'm trying to think of the others
that also were there.
In fact, he was the one that was telling us that some
of that goes back into the war ... the Russian traffic.
There is ••• that's right, but most of that intercept was
Right, that's right.
And that's the material that was what we had in our
compartmented area for so long down here under .••
British file, or was it another?
•.•. you know ••• her name was Marlene ••.• was Malone when
she was in the army. She married ..•. God, what's his
name ••••
Pritchard?
No ...• I can't think of his name.
Oh, I know who you .••. I talked to her the other day.
Anyway, she had that section for years, and they ran ••
and Gardner •..• oh, what's his name, anyway, he was our
representative int~~~ 1 .. special
section •.. involving this traffic. She ran it over here
for a long/time and then he came back and took it over
or vice versa, I don't remember, these are all things
you can check if you need to, but it was that material
that produced and it was closely held, it produced an
enormous amount of extremely useful information on
lt°OP SECRET/./SI)
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84 • OGA
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EO 3.3b(3) EO 3.3b(6) PL 86-36/50 USC 3605
EO 3.3b(3) P.L 86-36/50 USC 3605
agents. Some of it was useful twenty yaars after the
fact.
That's exactly right. This is stuff •••• Rosenberg's
stuff is in and the Hiss stuff, both of them.
And there's a lot in there.
Now this material was
but this was one of the more sensitive
sources of information for a long time after the war ••.
very very close together.
They closed it down.
Yeah, well I guess they .•.. it's run it's course.
In fact, they've given us the records.
Yes, oh, they have? Some of them. !..------------------------.
~ 71.;,,,..f"I S-r~lr-ey 1 1f...._/''f fcu~'f v ? Well, you know, Tippy Studdy. Do you know Tippy Studdy?
No.
OGA
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CURRIER:
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\ ..
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B'"OP 8ECRETl/81) 86
FARLEY: Even though there have been a couple of magazine articles
trying to expose it.
CURRIER: Yeah, yeah.
SCHORRECK: We were going to ask you about the "Winds Execute."
FARLEY: Shall we get him back from London?
CURRIER: Ok.
FARLEY: The equipment you brought back was the DF equipment,
and . ...
CURRIER: The DF equipment and, let's see, we brought back some
of their code recoveries and that sort of thing on the
German stuff and we brought back all of that sort of
material that we copied on the submarine charts and
the operational manuals that had been captured, which
we either photostated or I copied by hand. The •.• as
much information as was available on German air raids
and that kind of thing ••.. methods of operation, that
sort of thing. Mostly navy, though. Now I don't know
what Sinkov actually ended up with.
SCHORRECK Did they have any contributions to make toward JN-25?
CURRIER: They had contributions, but nothing that didn't
duplicate what we already had. They .•• we were way
ahead of them on additive recovery and book recoveries,
but they did work on it and the •••. Malcom Burnett who
0COP SE:GRET//81)
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WOP SECRET//31) • 87
came here from Singapore as the first liaison officer
between the Royal Navy and us. In fact, he took my
house in '46, and I went to GCHQ. Nearly ruined it.
Yeah, they aia .•.. they continued to make contributions,
but they didn't have anything that I considered to be
significant at any point, and I don't recall ever
having to rely on anything that they produced. I
don't think there was anything uniqu~, I'm quite
certain, because we had, oh a hundred times as many
people on it, so that there was no real requirement.
They got everything; almost everything that we produced
as far as I know, but I don't recall getting anything
from them. They did quite a bit of intercept, of course,
in East Africa and Colombo.
SCHORRECK: They got gradually pushed back further and further. They
started in Singapore and then they wound up in .•.
CURRIER: () .
Columbo, first.
SCHORRECK: 0
Columbo and then Killindini.
CURRIER: Killindini, yeah.
SCHOR RECK: And they ..•• what was they ability? Was it good, or ••••
I don't think it was that good.
CURRIER: It wasn't all that good, no. Of course, we had .•.• when
we lost Guam and the Philippines, all we had was
Pearl. But it's surprising how much we got.
SCHORRECK: Well, we picked up with •.• Bainbridge Island got some
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4256089 88
0COP 5 EC RET//~ I)
Bainbridge did, yeah, Lou Tordella was also in charge
of Bainbridge.
That's right.
Would you excuse me for just a minute. I have to make
another trip.
I don't think we need to get into any detail on your
trip back on the Revenge and the Overton, because you've
covered that pretty well.
No, that's not, that's not really very important anyway.
Interesting, but •..•
Was it ••• Farrago mentioned it in his book, The Broken Seal?
Yeah.
But when you got back with all the equipment and supplies;
I mean codebooks and ciphers, back to OP-20G, did you
brief a group of people or did you just get with the top
man and try to explain what happened?
We had several conversations. I do not remember ever
sitting down and briefing a group of people. I remember
talking with various people in the section, but I never
went up, for instance, to talk to anybody in ONI, ever.
I talked to Safford.
Were you pledged by the British not to say anything?
No, no, no. And arranging for communications, for
instance, and that was one of the things that I had
to do with that bloody one-time pad until we set up
something else. I, let's see, did I go out to Cheltenham
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0COP SEC RETi_iS I)
with that? Yeah, I think I took ... I went out to
Cheltenham with that Marconni DF equipment, but I
had no hand in setting it up or using it. In fact,
I wouldn't have been of any use to them anyway, because
I wouldn't have known how. But I did, I think, saw
that that was delivered and then came back and went
to work. And this is understandable, I think, in a way,
because I went, at that point, went right back into
the Pacific room, and put out of my mind almost completely
anything that I had learned about the Atlantic War and
the Germans. I had, from there on, I had no use for
it. Well, I was there to answer questions if anyone
wanted to ask anything about what had happened or what
I thought about it. It soon dissipated and people, I
think, lost interest as far as I could tell. But as
soon as we actually set up our liaison channels and they
assigned people to us, Foss, let's see, Foss was the
first one who came to Nebraska Avenue. Burnett was
at the Navy Department and he left and I think that
Foss came next; called him lend-lease Jesus. Yeah, he
was next and then Baltworth, but for the rest of the
war, we always had at least GCHQ liaison officer at
Nebraska Avenue who had complete access to everything
as far as I knew. He was in and out of both the
Atlantic and the Pacific sections, and quite frequently,
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4256089 90
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he would show me the reports that he was writing on
TZ and TY and TT doing, and as far as I know, he had
complete access to everything and our people on the
other side also did. We did it a little bit differently
however. We didn't •..• let's see .•.. the U.S. Navy, as far
as I can remember, during the war, did not actually send
a liaison officer over there. I may be wrong. Do you
know whether or not they did?
I don't think we did.
A lot of army troopers, but I don't know how many others.
Yeah, well, outside of those 30 or 40 people who went over
to work at Bletchley, which included Howie Campaign.f1- I /
7 / think was among them ••.• Joe Eachus .... Joe Eachu~ was
there, and these are all mathematician types. Not all
of them, most of them. In fact, Joe Eachus married
Barbara, who taught me to play Brahams. Yeah, Joe
Eachus, Howie Campaign~a couple of others, who were
navy reserve types, mathematicians, all of them went
to Bletchley to work with the joint group. So in that
respect, we did, in fact, have navy representation, but
I don't remember ever having a reporter-type~ a liaison
officer who reported back precisely what was going on,
although there may have been one of those who was
assigned this.
Back at OP-20G .••.
Yeah ••••
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FARLEY: •.•. did any of the junior officers or your fellow
officers, were they curious about your trip to England
and what happened and try to find out what was relevant?
CURRIER: Yeah, they were curious when I went and the plans were
being made for me to go. It happened all of a sudden,
in fact, it happened the day before Christmas. I was
supposed to have gone. (I guess it was three or four
days before Christmas.) I was supposed to have gone
before Christmas and I'm told that the hold-up was
1ZI--that King George IV did not get in with Lord Halifax ~
in time so that he had to delay our departure for
about a week. It seemed to me we left on the second
or third of January or something. But yeah, they
were not overly curious, in fact, there weren't all
that many people around to tell you the truth. Yeah,
we were still pretty thin, but I remember that I
was fussing around for orders and they were having
a Christmas party and I couldn't find anyone to sign
any papers. Raven says he remembers it. He remembers
more about things that I did than I do. I kind of
hope he can be sure he remembers.
SCHORRECK: That's what he said, yeah.
CURRIER: He had a very vivid memory. No, there wasn~t .ill of
. '""'· that cur1o~s1ty, no.
0COP SECRET.I/SI)
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4256089 92
EFOP SECRET/.i'SI) When you came back, Raven in one of the interviews
complained what you just fed them a little
tidbit now and then after the meeting in London and
wouldn't tell him the whole story.
Well, I don't know~ I don't remember doing that
conscientiously. I suspect that probably what happened
was that I, when I got back I found that there was
an awful lot of work to do and I couldn't be bothered
telling even went on with that that I didn't think
was all that important, since I brought over what I
was supposed to bring, I brought back all the notes
and material I could, and it was given to people who
I thought would use it, and since most of it was on
the Atlantic side, not on the Pacific, I did not
concern myself with it anymore. And it may well be
that Raven's impression was right, that I was busy
working on the Japanese and I couldn't be bothered
with the German.
He claimed that he and, I've forgotten the other
officer, had a deal that each one ~ould independently
interogate you at lunch and then afterwards compare
quotes.
Well, it's possible, but I don't remember it happening
that way, but as I say, his memory is better than
mine .
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4256089 93
B'"or SECRET.I/SI) Good.
But I think the explanation really is, seriously, is
that I guess I sort of lost interest in the Atlantic
War and I knew what I had brought back and I thought
those who needed it had it, and that I was quite busy
well occupied with the Japanese, so I worked that.
What did you think about the "winds execute" message?
Whether it existed or not? No. I don't think it
existed.
You don't think it existed?
No, I don't think so. I think I would have known.
Safford got me into a corner one day and said, "You
did remember that "winds" message. You told me about
it," and I said, "No, I didn't. I never said any such
thing." There was a rumor going around; which fed on
itself, and people told me, "You must remember seeing
that," and then suddenly someone would say, "Yeah,
maybe I did. Yeah, I did. I can't remember where,
but maybe I did see it," and this sort of thing, as
I say, fed on itself and reached a point where there
were several people who were certain that it existed.
I never saw it, and I never really talked to anyone
who had any hard evidence that they had seen it, so
my own impression is that this sort of a system did in
fact, exist, as far as the Japanese were concerned as "east
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wind rain," that sort of thing, but if, in fact, they
put it into effect I don't believe we got any "execute"
message. I really don't believe it, but I can't prove ••••
SCHORRECK: Wouldn't have said anything anyway •••
CURRIER: No.
SCHORRECK: ••• that was of any strategic importance.
CURRIER: No, it was just of interest when Safford, in testifying
before the Pearl Harbor Committee, made so much of it.
SCHORRECK: That's right.
CURRIER: But •••
SCHORRECK: Everybody knew that relations were strained anyhow.
CURRIER: Yeah, that's right.
SCHORRECK: And it never did indicate where the Japanese were going
to attack.
No, and I certainly never saw it, and as I say, I
never knew anyone who had seen it. In nothing but
this little room ••.•
SCHORRECK: Somebody has come forward now, I can't remember his
name •••
FARLEY: Ralph Briggs.
SCHORRECK: Ralph Briggs, who was an intercept operator a~
Cheltenham, and he has come forward and said that
he actually copied the message.
CURRIER: Well, he may have; he may have. I never saw it.
FARLEY: Well, that's a ••••.
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4256089 95
ft"OP SECRET//SI)
There were a lot of things that I didn't see that you
must realize happened and I don't know anything about.
I certainly don't remember.
In fact, the author, I've forgotten his name again, working
with Raven and Captain Currier ••••
Toland •••
Toland heard about this Briggs report and tried to get·
a copy of it. I don't know whether he did or not.
Freedom of Information.
Yeah.
Did he get a copy of it?
Yeah.
He did. It was sanitized •••• '
••• it was the sanitized version.
Well, as I say, if the message existed and if it was
copied by anybody, you couldn't prove it by me.·
Do you think the army might •••• ! know you can't speak
for the army, but did you ever hear anything that
the army might have intercepted it, and failed to
deliver it?
No, never heard anything; never heard that.
By the way, there is something which I did hear and
this is nothing ••• not first-hand information. Did 1111~0 Po,001
you ever read a book by a man named Disco Poplov? ... ... ... ...
Yeah.
WOP S~GRET./J~I)
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Did you read that? Do you remember in it his allegation
that he talked to Hoover and told Hoover that he had
gotten a request from the Japanese through the Germans
to determine what the effect of a torpedo attack on the
Italian fleet was? Do you remember that?
Yep.
And that Hoover didn't like him in the first place 1 'p;10A-(f'oolr-p,! 0
and "poo-pooed" it, and that he sent word to his
agent in Hawaii and briefed him on the subject, and
this was never made known to anybody. About five
years ago ••. four years ago, I guess •... when I was
doing sort of consulting around here •.• came in
more frequently .•.• ! went up to see Norm Boardman
and showed him this and said, "Would you get in touch
with the FBI in their files and see if you can get
for me any informtion on the subject?" He.did, and
we got it, and it happened exactly as he said in Hawaii.
So, I must assume, working back from that, that the /?ot°oV
original interview of Poplov with Hoover was correct.
Hum.
I've got that paper at home. I hope •.• I don't know
whether Norm Boardman kept a copy here or not.
We'll look for it.
But an interesting side.
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425608. 97
War SECRET.1.1s1 J Yeah, very interesting. Boardman's working over in
the office.
He is? You might ask him about it, if you remember.
I don't know whether he got it and gave it all to me,
or whether he kept a copy, but it would be •••• he got it
from ••• whether he got it from the FBI here, or whether
they got it in turn from Hawaii, I don't know, but I got Po/.'Pt/
a copy of the actual briefing. So Poplov was right. '-,,_./
So maybe Hoover was the one who got us into this
mess.
Could be, yeah.
Could be, yeah. Well, anyway ...•
Let's go on •..
Yeah.
Back at OP-20G, when you got back from England it was
in the early '30s?
April •..• April •..• April '41.
I'm sorry •••• '41 .••
We were there about three months ••.• middle of April •••
April '41.
And you were at OP-20G through Pearl Harbor?
Yeah.
What do you remember about that day; about Pearl Harbor
day?
0COP €! E:GRET//SI)
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4256089 • B°"OP SECRET.I/SI)
CURRIER: My wife has to keep reminding me where I was.
FARLEY: Down in the honeymoon belt?
CURRIER: I think she said I was downstairs stoking the furnaces,
I've forgotten. I honestly don't •.. I really don't
remember, which is very strange, because most people
do. I remember being told about it, and "to get the
hell down here," but I don't remember .•.. ! honestly
do not remember where I was. I really don't. I think
what my wife actually said was that we were at a
party somewhere. Somebody had the radio on and it
came on and we all piled around, but I honestly
don't have any idea.
FARLEY: But you weren't on duty at the •••
CURRIER: I was not •..
FARLEY: ••.. on secure watch?
CURRIER: It wasn't ••.. didn't happen on my watch, no, no, but
we had not had actually watches as such set up before
that. But we damned well soon after that did.
FARLEY: Was that because of the message talking about "needing
more booze in Berlin?"
CURRIER: I don't know. I take it back, there were, as Raven
can tell you, there were watches on verbal round the ? --. K
clock, but there were people like Al ~~amer who didn't
think they needed to do anything until tomorrow morning
if he would happen to be tired in the afternoon. So I
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4256089 99
ear SECRET.I/SI)
think probably while the watch was on, the link between
what the watch officers produced and ONI who was the
consu~er, was a bit weak.
And that was finally xed out entirely. ONI was xed out
Yeah, right.
Didn't get anything, except from another source.
That's right, but you see all of the language people
were old ONI people who worked in OP-20G •.. They weren't
OP-20G people at all, and they were controlled by
them and end product was controlled by them. They were 1&1.!i
the ones who did the translating. Fred Woodr~ was hired,
and Cate, were hired by ONI. Wor~ed in OP-29, but they
were hired by ONI who paid for them. Fred's sister
was originally, Dorothy, and all that perio~ before
Pearl Harbor, all of the language people, as far
as I can. remember, were all working for ONI in OP-20
spaces on OP-20 material.
Did that change?
Yeah, that changed. As soon as war broke out, atl
of the language trainees, the Japanese language trainees
who came to OP-20, all of them and every one
who had been on the ONI payroll shifted over to OP-20.
Even before we moved out to Nebraska Avenue, which was
in February '42? ~- , ~
I) 4 " ,,., ") d. ,,,.,/· . ,
ear SE:GRE:T.//~I)
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425608. 10'0'
WOP SE:GRE:T././61)
What happened·to you then?
Well, from the time ••• from Pearl Harbor on, let's see,
Rosey Mason came ••• he arrived, I think, about the 1st
of February '42, so there was a period of a couple of
months anyway where thing_s were not well organized and
I felt pretty much alone, there was some doubt as to
who ••• where the chain of command was, as I remember,
and we were not in all that good shape to do .anything
operational, but when Rosey came, he and I assumed
alternate twelve on and twelve off watches we put up
with.
What section were you in then?
What ·turned out to be GZ.
Ok, yeah.
The operational translation end of the business, but
it also involved ••• it also involved all of the book
breaking, code recovery, and that kind of thing, so
that he and I were the only two for about three
months who were equipped to do Japanese or any
thing ~f the sort of thing that GZ did in subsequent
years. We got about four or five old retreaded
language officers who had since left the navy back
on activ~ duty, but as Rosey said, "They'~e all useless."
He said, "I guess you and I are going to have to do
this until.we can get someone else to help out,"
EFOP SECRET/./81)
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425608. HJl
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which we did. Then when we moved out to Nebraska
Avenue in~Jwe set up the senior·watch list, .. -
made up of me and Rosey Mason and Ruff Taylor came
back very shortly thereafter ••• there were four of
us. There were three of us originally, and Rosey
took all of the ••• let's see he took all of the day watches,
and we split up the night watches between the other
two of us, and whenever we •••• we worked during the
day and stood watches at night, so that there were
many eighteen hour days, about every other day was
an eight~en hour day. Then we got a few more people, B"~K.S Hot.etJM8 ~1u_
Red Laswell, Vance Holkum, Phil Richar~son, who
not all were equipped to serve on a senior watch desk,
but there were usually •••• there were just four of_ us,
actuall~, who served on the senior watch desk and did
all of the final outgoing translations and annotating •••
this sort of thing, in addition to working in the
section dur~ng the days. It was really •.••• we were
running ••• one of the four of us was running GZ at all
times ~uring the war, and a very satisfying way of
doing things, I guess.
Did you stay in OP-29G the whole time ••• I mean in
Washington?
B'"or SEGRE.T.//SI)
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CURRIER:
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4256088 102 •
B°"OP s·ECRET//81)
I stayed in Washington~ exce~t for one •••• no, actually,
I was there for .the .entire war in GZ. They were going
to send me to Pearl, but ~osey said, "No, you can't
do that," and so I didn't go. Then the next year, he
went. We were having p'roblems • .".personal problems, really.
It started out by healthy competition, but it soon ended
up with a, you know, a lo~ of unpleasantness, and nobody ..
trusting one another, and so on, so they thought to
avoid that sort of thing to obviate it, they switched
the senior officer of each section and so Rosey Mason
went out there and Red Laswell came here.
He was a Marine officer, wasn't he?
He was a Marine, yeah.
That never did subside though, did it?
Not really •••
That feeling •••
No, you should have seen some of the messages that
Rosey wrote. They were really honeys. There was
quite a lot of ••• it got to the point where it was
really very serious. I don't know that it actually
impeded operations, but it didn't help any.
They, I mean, silly things, like not trusting one
another's recoveries; having to check everything.
Right.
0COP SECRET//SI)
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CURRIER:
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FARLEY:
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425608. • 193
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Shall we talk about a couple of individuals? You
mentioned Brotherhood early in the game, what sort of
a pers_on was he?
Not very impressive.
Technical ability, and personality?
Not, well~ personality was sort·of minus one, and as
far as I know, he was never particularly good at
anything, but I, with reservations, I did not know
everything that he did, so I •••• he never did anything
I thought was really first-class. Nobody liked him; .(.. .
almost nobody. Ruff Taylor hated him. He wouldn't
let him in the room with us. I remember one time,
I asked Brotherhood out of the kindness of my heart
to go have lunch, so I thought I'd go around to see e, e.
' .
if Ruff Taylor wanted to come along too, and Ruff wouldn't
let him in the room. He made him show his badge when
he came in ••• told him to "wait out there." Yeah, he
was ••• and Ruff could be cutting.
Did Taylor rank him?
Yeah, oh, yeah; he was ••• I did too, you know, I never
knew anyone who liked him. He was just an unpleasant
guy for some reason •. I think he tried it hard enough.
He was in •••• was it real estate ••• som~thing ••••
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DO·CID :· 425608. EFOP SEC?RET//SI) •
FARLEY:
CURRIER:
SCHORRECK:
CURRIER:
1·94
was he a manager at •••• or couldn't he manage?
Well, I never saw.him manage anything, but as I say,
he may have done thipgs that I didn't know anything
about later on, so I honestly •••• all I know is that
when he first arrived for the first year or so after
that, nobody really had any use for him, and as I say,
I didn't think very much of him either, but I don't
know what jobs he ended up doing, so I really can't
tell you precisely how he did.
How about Mason?
Rosey Mason? He was an
He was probably-one of the two or three people who
made a greater impact upon what we did. He was
a terrifically personable guy. He was extremely
capable •• ;.a very good organizer. Profane to the
point of pleas •••• great pleasure. He was one really •••
and a •••• he had a mind of his own and he was really
very good.: There ~ere very few others that I've
ever met who I thought as highly of as Rosey.
And I was very disappointed when I was SUSLO. He
was going to come over as naval attache and he had
his problem and •••• his stomach problem, not his
thrQat, and they had to switch •••• let's see ••• and
Frost •••• I can't remember now •••• I think Frost
finally came. Anyway, Rosey Mason did not come and
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• lSS
0COP S~GRET//51) I was very unhappy because I was looking forward to
it. This was the end of the first year that I was
SUSLO and l thought, well, if he's going to be
here for two years as naval attache well, this should
be great fun. But he didn't;· he never came. Then
he eventually became Commandant First Naval District,
whi~h is sort of a dead-end job for people who really ·
can't do· anything else. That was after he had his
·Stomach· :pro-blems, an.d the.n ,- of .. course,.. later on, he
had throat cancer. He retired, and he s~ill ••• I talked
with him on the phone about two years ago and Roger
Pineau told me that he had talked to him' very recently
and he's going to talk with ~im again, s9 he's still •••
he's still around; I don't know whether be wants to I
talk or not. He talks through an amplifier so that
his voice •••• ! don't know whether it would even record
well.
Is it intelligible?
It's intelligible, but in absolute monotones. If you've
ever heard •••
Yeah, I have. What is Pineau doing?
He j~st retired. He lives in Bethesda and he's now
writing a book on cont~ibuticins of Japahese Language
Officer's during ·world War II.
Really?
0COP SECRET.I.ISi)
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• EfOP SECRET/.i'SI)
..
- '
- . - - - '"'i --
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---------------- -----. ___________ ..,,.,.·
0COP SECRET//31)
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\ • HJ6
EFOP SECRET//SI) CURRIER: ·Yeah, that's what he came up to see me about.
SCHORRECK: Good.
CURRIER: .. God ••• which reminds me ••• I've got to call him ••• yeah •••
SCHORRECK:
Um ••• and he's gotten a lot of information. He's.gotten •••
he's been working with the people at Nebraska Avenue,·
and he's gotten a lot from them. He's sent me some
as a matter of fact •••• some lists of people to see
if I'd remember •••• could remember, more about what
some of them did ••• what they looked like. We were
interested in Van Derroll, who did this ••••• well,
as I said, my recollection of van Derrol was one
of the least able of ~he language students and who
talked more than anyone else I can think of except
J.J. Instrom, who was also a language student.
And I was •••• I say never impressed with anything that
he did. He was always expressing a desire •••• I
remember •••• mostly on the min •••• also entirely on
the minor ciphers and I never thought very much about
him, but Raven called me on the phone after he saw
the book and asked me if I'd read it, and I had not
yet read it. He said one would gather enough after
reading the book that Van Derroll was the one running
TC and if it hadn't been for him, we would have lost
the war.
Frank Raven did a review of that book.
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ft"OP SECRET/ISi) CURRIER: Oh, he did?
SCHORRECK: Yeah •••• not too good•
CURRIER: .Yeah.
FARLEY: Is that the one he said to "avoid if you can?"
SCHORRECK: Yeah, "avoid that one, if you can."
FARLEY: Raven mentioned the "lon; John Leitweiler"
CURRIER:
as being a character. Was he really a character?
Yeah, he was a character in many ways. He was •••
he was sort of mid-west Seventh-Day Mormon type or
something like that. He was a mixture of all sorts
of things •••• very countrified. Whether or not part of
this was put on or not,· I don't know, but he was and
he impressed most people with the fact that he wasn't
all that bright, but you damned well better do things
his way. · I don't think this is true, by the way.
I think he was as intelligent as most of us, but he
had a strange way about him of talking and acting and
insisting that things be done •••• going very much by
the book ••• this kind of thing, which was a little
upsetting to someone who was trying to get a job done.
·And I don't think he's remembered all that kindly
by some of his subordinates, but I don't recall ever
having any run-ins with him. I can remember talking
with him many many times on various things. I liked
him. In·fact, he lived fairly close to us 9n
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~~~~~~----~~~~~~~~ , but I remember he •••• early
on, actually before the war, he was, I think, one of
about eight or ten students who came to take the special
communications course at OP-29, and the first thing he
did when he arrived was to plant a garden and everyone
kidded him about it. He had a big garden and he used
to raise potatoes, and anyway, he got sort of a reputation
for being this sort of country bumpkin type, but he:
spoke very very slowly ••• very deliberately and went through
all phases of everything ~efore he had us end this evidence.
So this irked people.
FARLEY: Was Raven an ideal navy officer?
CURRIER: Oh ••• well, it depends on what you mean by an idea~
navy •••• he •••• I wouldn't had wanted to put him to sea
running a ship, but ••• and ••• nor was I, by the way, as
far as that was ·concerned, but Raven was very damned
good at what he did, in fact, I'd venture to say that
probably of all the people that I know, barring one
or two, he was the best all-around cryptanalyst that
I've met.
FARLEY: Good •••••••
END Tape 3, Side 1
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Alright, Cap •••• a •••• Henry •••
Captain what, if you could kind of summarize what you
say were the Brigadier's contributions to cryptology.
And this is just for us. You know, we're publishing
his collective works and I would just like to get
your impression.
Well, it's a difficult question to answer in a few
w.ords ••• really is· ••• very ••• extremely difficu.lt, but
there is not doubt in my mind that he has an innate
talent which he exercises-with great skill and that
has probably done more, not only in producing e"b:d
product, but in encouraging others to work arid be
a part of the organization. This is one of his
great contributions,_really, because everyone that
I've ever known who had known John Tiltman at apy
time in his life, particularly the younger people •••
they all looked up to him ••• and no ma~ter what·tney
did and how they developed in their future lives,
they always looked to him as their original mentor and
feel that he is really one of the greats. There were
certain things that he could not do, and admits that he
can not do, ju~t the way I do. High-level mathematics
is absolutely out of his camp. He does have no
use for computers, and while he's certainly willing
to use their product, he would much rather sit down
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EFOP SECRET/./81)
with a pencil and paper, and he has solved some
extremely difficult problems, some that many others
have faileO at, and he's been doing it for a very
long time, and he has a sense (an inborn sense,
think) that gives him a true feel of the problem
by the time that he is gotten in.to it far enough
to start form.Ing conclusions which is something
that many people never acquire; I mean, they can
on working for the rest of their lives and punch
buttons in the comput~r.and still not really get
I
go
a feel for the problem ~nd know precisely what lay
in the minds of the people who produced it! in the
first place. As a result, he has, for instance,
he did, bertainly duiing the war and before the
war, he was, for instance, their chief cryptographer,
and this means that he.was not onl.y a cryptanalyst,
but he did, in fa~t, produce quite a few systems for
their use •••• not machine systems, .mind you, but hand
systems which were be.autifully devised, and he has
a great great ability in this regard. He, I think,
probably, he was head of .... I ______ .... ~et' s see •••
well, I guess it -war' t long (fter the war, actually
he ~as made head of but he was never part
of their directorate ••• not really, although he was
actually.in the top level of their administration.
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FARLEY:
As I remember.~.although I may have this just a bit
wrong, he was never actually a part of their
directorate, the reason/being that many of their
top people felt that John was the best thing that
they had c=Jt>ut that t~ey didn't feel that John
would do in the directorate, try.ing to oversee the
work of, not o_nly_: ?eop_l~ Dbut . throughout the
enti~e Agency, and this is a quality that I think
prob~bly many of us also have that~ ••• while we I
may be absolutely first class doing a job that
we know best, we're not all that keen about telling
someone else what to do, or to arrange things for
them to do. John is very good with ~ small group,
and he's absolutely first class alone, and has, as
I say, contributed probably more than any half a
dozen people that I know of, and he's been at it
Longer, and this is one of the reasons that he is •••
he started right from the very beginning ••• '2 ••••
actually 1923 is ·when he really started ••• took a
Rus~ian course and went off to and stayed
there about ten years and worked principally on
Soviet ciphers. He was the one who was producing
almost·all of the material that they got.
That's marvelous.
Did he retire from GCHQ?
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i . ..,.
.,.,.-.
. r :
-- - - --- -- ·- - ---- ----
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B°"OP SECRET.I/SI)
Yes; he did. Ha reti~ed from GCHQ ••• retired's the
wrong word. He has a small.~.or did have, at least,
a small army pension and he ••• I've £orgotten exactly
when the situation w.as,. but I think that he didn't
work a ·sufficient number of years for GCHQ to get an
acutal pension. He took ••• I· believe he took severence
pay, but I may have it wrong. I don't think he did,
and I'm pretty certain that he gets no pension from
GCHQ, but he does still have, and continues to· get
a small army pension, I believe, yeah, I think that's
right.
He •••• he is somewhat unique. There was one other
person who has ever worked, as far as I know, in a
foreign cryptologic organization and that was Yardley.
Yeah.
We were kind of •• ~
Two.~~that's right.
The Brigadier, when he came here to work for NSA as
a private citizen •• ~
Yeah~ under contract~
•••• under contract.~.did that cause the British
government any anxiety?
No~ absolutely not~
None?
No, they were completely in accord.
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4256.08. EFOP SECRET/.i'SI) • 113
SCHORRECK: Did ••• was ••• do you think there was any negotiation
back and forth to do that though?
CURRIER: A •••• I think information passed, but whether or not
you could call it negotiation, I would not be too sure.·
SCHORRECK: I don't know whether we asked their permission, ~r •••
CURRIER: I'm sure that the fact that we were about to offer
him a contract was made known to them, I'm sure,
because we are ••• we're·very close, and I'm sure there
was nothing held back •• ~nothing withheld on either . .
side, and I'm just as certain that they were iri
complete accord, and there was no problem ••• absolutely
no problem at all.
SCHORRECK: I have one other question. The Brigadier received
OBE •••
CURRIER: Yeah •••
SCHOR RECK: ••• in ••• at the end of '34, when he came back from
India. Why was that?
CURRIER: Well, that was for the work that he did on •••
SCHORRECK: ••• on the Russian ciphers?
CURRIER: •••.• on the Russian ·ciphers.·
SCHORRECK: Ok. He was very young to get an OBE.
CURRIER: A •••• you may ••• ! don't know whether that is very
young or not •••
SCHORRECK: I really wasn't sure, but •••
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EFOP SECRET/ISi) I'm not SQre. I always say I'm not sure. I suspect
that the average age of OBE recipients is somewhat ..
higher than that •••• t· would guess.
I would think ••• had the Brigadier worked at an
administrative level, he probably would have been
knighted.
A •••• he probably would haye been.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, he probably would have been. The knighth •••
well, the KCNG goes with the Director, GCHQ ••• has for
quite some time ••• well,· not quite some time, since
the war.
Since the war.
Yeah ••• before that· ••• Denni~n, for instance, who was
with the Admiralty ~n the famous room 40, was a retired
Schoolmaster Commander,· and he came here once to the
war, but he was never •• ;and not after the war ••• right
at the beginning of the war; in fact, I remember taking
him around~ but he was never knighted, nor was it ever
considered. Travis, I believe, wa~ the first ••• was
the first one, and that was in ••• about, let's see •••
Travis •••• Travis took over before the end"of the war
and he was Director, GCHQ, '46 through '50, or ~omething
like that. I've forgotten the exact dates. And it was .
. · . .. . . ...
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in the course of° that. three or four ye.aYs that he was
knighted, and I think that was the first KCNG for Director
GCHQ. Sort of goes with the job, as anyone who becomes
a •••• almost all Major Generals get a certain degree of
knighthood. Lieutenant Generals get another and·Full
Generals get another, and then if they're particularly
liked by the Royal family, then they get a KG or
something, which-is unusual~
Capt, I hate to cut this short ••• it's been so int~resiing,
but I know your are bad ••••
I really shouldn't talk anymore •••• honesbly·, right
now, but I would very much like to see you organize
a couple of groups so that we can go over maybe some
of the same ground, but other material too. It would
be very helpful if you could get two or th~ee other
people together.
How long did you stay in the business, Captain?
Well, I was in it £rom 19 •••• well, you can say from
1932 to 1962. Well~ a~tually I wasn't out of the
business then. I was still in it •. I came·back to
NSA and I eventually ••• I didn't retire ••• I resigned
fr_om NSA and stayed on ••• kept a •••• to get my clear.ances
and my consultant's badge.
Well, wha.t we'd like to do then would be to ••• when you
can arrange it for you to come back again to pick up
at the end of the war.
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Yeah.
On through.
I think probably there is ••• there's quite a bit more to
be learned about some of the technical aspects of the
earlier days, which might be worthwhile in a history.
I don't know how much detail you'd want to go into,
but I think some of that should be recorded. It
would be helpful, however, if we were to do this
again, to have some of the things that have already
been written, sort··of in outline form to allow me
or whoever's d~ing the talking to arrange their thoughts
in a more logical order.that makes it much easier
to transcribe. Hopping around is.· •••
One of the other things we can do js to send you a
transcript of your tapes •••
Yeah •••
••• so that you know what you've talked about.
Um hum, yeah.
What do you think the classification of this one
will be •••• SECRET •••• HVCCO ••••
Well, it •••• well, I suspect it'd better be •••• no
I think you had better ••• be probably more •••
TOP SECRET ••• ?
Yeah, I would, because there are little things that
keep coming up all the time that I think would •••
I think ••• had bettet be· ••••
0COP SECRET//31)
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0COP ~ECRE:T//SI)
No problem at all.
Yeah, I would think so. I wouldn't mail that to me.
No •••• we'll have Colby smuggle it out.
What we'll do is just come down and come in and read it,
and then ••• along with some other things.
Yeah, what I would like to do, really, if you do this
again, and I hope we do, and I hope we get some others,
is to have a day of preparation before we do anything.
Exactly •••• exactly •••• if we have somebody in the area,
we'll do that, but it's hard if you're going to be
here for one day. This could take all day. It could
take another day just to read it.
What I would like to do is to sit down and go over
at least an outline of a lot of the written materials
already been done to order things in my own mind,
to jog my memory, give me points of departure, so that
I really know what I'm talking.about. Rambling is
alright, and I keep remembering things, but it's not
the easiest way to get information out of someone.
Sometimes it can be helpful if the person that we
interview can kind of guide us a little bit as well.
Yeah, sure, that's right.
And that's the benefit of reading beforehand.
Yeah, right.
0COP SE:CRE:T././81)
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• 118
0COP SECRET.//61) Well, thank you very much, Captain
Yes, we appreciate this •••• it's been ••• it's been
fun as well as informative.
Well, I like to do it ••• yeah.
END Tape III, Side 2
0COP SECRET.//61)
